More and more Business Process Outsourcing (B.P.O.) companies and IT-enabled services (I.T.E.S.) are recognising the potential of disabled people and are keen to hire them. Most of these companies recruit through N.G.O.s and also provide job training. Estimates suggest that the number of disabled people working in the B.P.O.- I.T.E.S. sector could be about 2,000.

For example, Bangalore-based B.P.O., 24/7 Customer, is associated with the N.G.O. EnAble India. Consequently it employs as many as 50 physically disabled individuals, including visually impaired people, who work as voice and accent trainers.

Another Bangalore-based company; Transworks B.P.O. (an Aditya Birla Group company) has 25 employees who are orthopaedically disabled. The company also plans to employ disabled people in the areas of Management and Information Systems, call listening and quality analysis. It too, has tied up with EnAble India.

Datamatics Technologies Limited, a non-voice based B.P.O. has a sizeable number of disabled employees. It has tied up with the National Society for Equal Opportunities for the Handicapped for such recruitments.

Delhi based, Flextronics Software Systems is yet another company seeking to recruit more disabled people in the near future.

All these are only a few illustrations. Analysing the trend, Prosenjit Ganguly, vice-president and head, Human Resource, Hinduja T.M.T. (H.T.M.T.) said, “It’s very relevant. I’m amazed at the skills some [disabled] people have. They have the ability and inclination to work extra hard and that makes all the difference.”

H.T.M.T. has tied up with Samarthanam, an NGO working with visually impaired people. It plans to tie up with two more NGOs, and make a structured recruitment plan for hiring people with disabilities.