MONTEGO BAY, St James — Despite severe damage to 60 per cent of the country’s business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, there have been minimal job losses, according to Gloria Henry, vice-president of the BPO and Logistics Division at the Port Authority of Jamaica.

“We have been here every day, every single day since the passing of Hurricane Melissa, ensuring that our business gets back on track, that we’re able to accommodate our customers, that they are able to serve, that they are able to maintain the jobs,” she told the Jamaica Observer, while empathising with employees who were impacted by the storm.

“The BPO sector as a whole is an important economic base for this city. It’s the second largest employer behind tourism. So, you know how important that is. And right now, some of our hotels are closed and we have to keep the people employed. So, again, you know, I want to continue to salute the workforce,” she added.

Henry credits the sector’s strategic rebound, despite the losses, to quick action by major stakeholders

“The Montego Bay Free Zone Company moved quickly to secure buildings, assess structural damage, and with the approval of our parent company — the Port Authority of Jamaica — mobilised contractors to begin emergency repairs,” she said.

Some private companies have also been doing everything possible to keep their operations going. For example Contax 360 BPO Solutions is hiring. In an ad updated on November 20, the company says walk-in interviews are being done, up to December 1, at the company’s new location on 31 Market Street in Montego Bay. Days after the previous location lost its roof, operations resumed from the 5th floor location across from Burchell Baptist Church.

“As one of the persons that was there on the original property as the roof was being blown off by the hurricane, I was obviously concerned about job security. Multiple buildings in the Free Zone area were affected. Essentially our company took a week to regroup and were up and running once again at a different location,” said one Contax 360 employee who asked not to be identified by name

That employee is one of approximately 62,000 people, according to data from early 2024, working in the fast-growing BPO sector. The Montego Bay Free Zone accounts for more than 7,000 jobs.

While there are BPO operations in Hanover and Westmoreland, those in St James appear to have borne the brunt of Melissa’s fury. Barnett Tech Park suffered severe flooding after the overflow of the Barnett and Montego Rivers, while several buildings in the Montego Bay Free Zone sustained significant roof damage leading to water intrusion and equipment loss.

“The place looked like a war zone,” stated president of the Global Services Association of Jamaica (GSAJ) Wayne Sinclair as he recalled his first walkthrough of a number of facilities one day after the storm.

He described the storm’s impact as “devastating but far from crippling”. This is because approximately 40 per cent of the sector’s workforce — located in Kingston, St Andrew, St Catherine, and parts of St Ann — were unaffected.

A complete financial assessment of the damage done by Hurricane Melissa is still being undertaken. However, Sinclair agreed that the cost of damaged and destroyed computers, furniture, structural repairs, and compromised IT infrastructure is expected to run into millions of US dollars.

“People are still figuring out the extent of their damage,” he told the Sunday Observer, adding that some issues may not become apparent until weeks later.

In the meantime, the recovery is well advanced. A BPO company Sinclair manages — National Credit Adjusters in the Montego Bay Free Zone — is yet another example of the sector’s ability to bounce back quickly. It was fully operational in less than a week after the storm.

“We were back up the very next Monday,” stated Sinclair, who noted that the only major challenges were transportation and storm-weary staff being able to physically make it in to work.

They had to go in as remote work-ready infrastructure, which proved effective during the COVID-19 pandemic, was not an option after Melissa’s onslaught wreaked havoc on electricity and Internet services.

Sinclair estimates that within two weeks of the storm at least half of the companies impacted have returned to full operation, while others are up and running but still facing a few challenges. He said a small percentage of the total employees remains displaced. Some operators have temporarily relocated to other sections of the Free Zone while others — like Contax 360 — have gone elsewhere in the city to facilitate repairs to their property.

Meanwhile Sinclair was emphatic in his praise for the island’s major utility providers — the Jamaica Public Service Company Ltd, the National Water Commission and telecommunications provider Flow — for the rapid restoration of service.

In his view, they were key to the quick rebound of the sector.

“If you don’t quote me on anything else, make sure you quote me on this,” insisted Sinclair. “For them to have gotten us up and going within two weeks of that catastrophe has been brilliant and key to our ability as a sector to rebound,” he said.

As he looks ahead to what comes after recovery, Sinclair made the point that Hurricane Melissa has reinforced the need for greater redundancy especially in communications. He said several companies have already begun integrating satellite services such as Starlink into their continuity plans

Still, he cautioned that even the best-prepared operation will experience downtime after a catastrophic event of Hurricane Melissa’s magnitude.

“Apart from building steel cages, roofs are going to get blown off in 185-mile-an-hour winds,” argued Sinclair. “There’s only so much you can do.”

He believes the sector’s rapid recovery has enhanced Jamaica’s global reputation.

International partners, he said, have expressed admiration for the speed with which operations resumed — especially when compared to disasters in countries like The Bahamas, where some outsourcing hubs were down for six months after major storms.

“I think our resilience and response has been brilliant,” said a proud Sinclair.

He said the path ahead will involve continued repairs, upgraded redundancies, and renewed investment in physical and digital infrastructure.

“We’re not sitting around scratching our heads,” he said. “We’re moving. And the fact that we are back up at 60-70 per cent capacity in under a month is proof that the future of the sector is still bright.”

As for Henry, she believes that as a country, there is a need to look at rebuilding with climate-resilient infrastructure in mind.

“We have seen what is happening with climate change. I think coming out of [1988’s Hurricane] Gilbert, we did reinforce our building code and made it more robust. And we have to continue to do that with the lessons learned from Hurricane Melissa,” she urged.

“We have to improve our drainage by putting in more flood-proof systems, elevated systems that can better withstand water intrusion and so on. We have to ensure that our roofing systems are properly reinforced now that we have a Category 5 hurricane as a test. Because before this, we really were working with the lessons we learned from Gilbert. But now we have this so we can ensure that we put systems in place,” added the port authority executive.