NY Food Stamp Call Centers Outsourced Internationally

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzout0305,0,6316471.story?coll=ny-business-headlines

Hundreds of thousands of phone calls each month from struggling New Yorkers who have questions about their food stamp benefits are being routed to call centers in India and Mexico, Newsday has learned.

In a taxpayer-funded twist on the issue of outsourcing U.S. jobs, the state uses J.P. Morgan Electronic Financial Services for the food stamp program and the bank in turn has relied on a call-center company with facilities outside the United States to handle queries. The foreign-based help desks answer questions from New York and more than 30 other states.

Advocates for the poor criticized the arrangement, saying it was ironic that needy New Yorkers were helping to sustain the jobs of offshore operators while unable to find sufficient work to feed themselves.

Richard Murphy, executive director of Community Food Resource Center, a Manhattan-based group that helps the poor, said he was "outraged by this outsourcing, if it is true."

He continued, "It is unconscionable to send state-funded jobs overseas in the face of the staggering number of unemployed New Yorkers." The state's unemployment rate stood at 6.5 percent in January, the most recent available data, nearly a full percentage point higher than the national rate.

[acmavm]

1. This ought to go over real well with unemployed New Yorkers. And

where are the republicans having their little soiree again? Is it New York? I just can't wait for the fireworks.

[twilight]

2. jesus

This is sick!

To think that a person living here in America that has to probably beg for the food stamps must speak to someone about them in India or Mexico is a shameful disgrace!

Is the federal government paying these people in India and Mexico. It might be nice if one of these jobs could be given to the person that needs a job and thus requires the food stamps.

Its hard enough dealing with the food stamp process, much less trying to discuss the complexities of it with someone in another FOREIGN country.

I guess that's what the * admin. wants. The less they know the better it seems.

:puke:

[KoKo]

3. Exactly! These are jobs...and they were never high paying but would

give folks something! What the hell is this? How much more is going on that we don't know about.

[gate of the sun]

4. Ironic isin't it?

and who is going to do something about this? It doesn't look like Kerry is going to ,four more years of this and this country is going to be in very bad shape.

[brokensymmetry]

5. Life as macabre comedy.

This is insanity. We're outsourcing the food stamp line? :crazy:

In a few years we're going to look around and ask "What were they thinking?"

[OneBlueSky]

6. un-be-friggn-lieveable . . .

where does the insanity end? . . . maybe the White House will outsource everything to the Taj Mahal . . .