Call centres in Guyana will soon be able to legally record calls between their companies and customers as the Interception of Communications (Amend-ment) Bill 2019 was yesterday passed by the National Assembly.
Minister of Public Telecommunications Catherine Hughes said that in the age of rapidly growing technological advancement, Guyana must seek to keep up, even as she pointed out that most companies record calls for quality assurance.
Most foreign companies state at the beginning of calls to their customer relations departments that calls may be monitored.
“One of the gaps for most of the international clients that have expressed an interest in investing in Guyana is the recognition that the primary Act does not allow for the recording of conversations and that’s why Mr Speaker, we come to this House to seek passage of these amendments,” she said.
Hughes made reference to Guyana’s call centre firms, some of which have won global awards for stellar service, saying that the expansion to exceptions in the Bill only seeks to make them even better. She hailed call centre employees for their service and for making Guyana recognised globally as a country to invest in for quality service skills.
“Here, I make specific reference to the advent of commercial call centres which, by the very nature of its operations, requires that the client and the provider must record conversations. The reason being, as many of us may know, is ensuring quality service to their customers,” Hughes noted.
“The call centre industry is rapidly growing…internationally, it is a (US) $156 billion industry and in Guyana, I have to say, we already have quite a few and we recognise that to make viable, we must be able to attract and continue to attract major international clientele. The coming of this amendment is likely to create a Herculean leap for them,” she said.
The Bill, she said, has small amendments but with “big impacts” and seeks to provide more exceptions to the offence of communication interception.
Under Section 3 of the 2008 Act, a person who intentionally intercepts a communication in the course of its transmission by means of a telecommunications system commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding $5 million dollars and to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years.
The Section provides exceptions where the interception occurs “in obedience to a warrant issued by a Judge” or “on the authority of a designated officer in the case of a national emergency or in responding to a case where approval for a warrant is impracticable having regard for the urgency of the case.”
The amendment being tabled seeks to add five more exceptions compatible to those found in “similar legislation across the region.”
The new exceptions include if the person has reasonable grounds for believing that the persons to whom or by whom the communication is transmitted, consents to the interception or if the communication is not a private telecommunication.
Also included is if the communication is intercepted as an ordinary incident in the course of employment in the provision of telecommunication services, the communication is a stored communication and is acquired in accordance with other law or the interception is of a communication transmitted by a private telecommunications network and is done either by a person who has a right to control the operation or use the network or a person with the express or implied consent of the person to whom or by whom the communication is transmitted.
