Social Bridges recently conducted an interview of Mr. Ahmad Sarwar, currently working as operations manager at Teradata Pakistan Global Consulting Center. The CSR strategies of the company, along with some general trends, were discussed thoroughly. You can read excerpts from the interview in the following lines.

Social Bridges: How would you define corporate social responsibility?

Ahmed Sarwar: CSR, in my opinion, is the way of giving back to the society from where you make your earnings. Both the public and private sector need to give back to the society, whatever way they deem suitable. Corporations, being private sector, need to be very active part of this giving back. So that’s my definition.

Social Bridges: So what your organization is doing in this regard - fulfilling its CSR?

Ahmed Sarwar: We do a lot many things. We have just launched the Teradata Care initiative. This is a global company initiative and we are starting with blood donation. We have already done the planning and will launch it in very near future. Next week, hopefully.

Additionally, we played an active part during the 2005 earthquake. Whether it was the packaging of food or transportation or other volunteer efforts, we chipped in our resources. However, the volunteer work was later channelized through Edhi Foundation to ensure a smoother flow.

On a related note, we continue doing charity work through the word of mouth. Like we collect donations to help those in need. Also helping the contractual employees like guards, peons etc if they need any financial assistance.

Social Bridges: But that’s just plain charity work. What your company is doing within the industry. Like promoting education and stuff?

Ahmed Sarwar: Yeah, we have partnership programs with six Pakistani universities - FAST, NUST, GIKI, LUMS, Jamshoro University and another one which I can’t recall right now. What we are doing is to actually inculcate the data architecture and warehousing concepts in the course work. We have also provided FAST with hi-fi machines for students to learn these concepts. We later also hire the students from the said institute, of course who have shown interest in our field of work.

We have also trained teachers and now these universities have proper data warehousing courses. So when a student graduate from these institutions, he/she has some idea and knowledge of all these concepts and stuff. His employment prospects are enhanced in this manner. Of course we also do the head hunting from these universities.

Social Bridges: So you are boosting the job market?

Ahmed Sarwar: Of course. We have expanded the IT job market in Pakistan by great deal. We all know about the competition we face from India in outsourcing jobs. What our company has done is the creation of so many IT-related jobs in this country. We are churning out the same quality professionals as one can find in the west.

As far as our relationship with employees is concerned, I guess it’s one of the best. Every Teradata employee gets a chance to go abroad for a two-three months training. In this way, we raise the professional compatibilities of our employees. Even if he joins another company, he will definitely raise the bar, the standards. So that’s a major contribution as well.

Social Bridges: You also give out IT excellence awards. What’s the thinking/ideology behind that?

Ahmed Sarwar: Yeah, we have been doing that for eight years now. The baseline is to promote IT excellence in Pakistan. The whole process is very transparent and the interesting thing is that Teradata is not involved in any of these procedures, except financing and arranging the event. We usually hire Price Waterhouse Coopers or related firms to ensure transparency. Next, we invite nominations from anyone working in the industry. The awards, like others, are divided into categories and they have become very popular in the Pakistani IT and Telecom scene.

Social Bridges: Coming back to the CSR scene, how would you compare your CSR endeavours with the other IT companies of Pakistan?

Ahmed Sarwar: We are way ahead of them. Every company surely does some CSR work in its own right but I don’t see any IT company doing massive work in education and training like we do. Similarly, I have seen very few companies doing the work in the promotion of IT education like we do.

Social Bridges: Do you have any plans to extend the scope of Teradata Care initiative besides blood donations?

Ahmed Sarwar: Well that’s a corporate initiative. We have to move in tandem with our parent company. Hopefully we’ll branch out in other arenas after some time.

The discussion then took a turn towards Pakistani media’s role in drawing foreign investments. Sarwar was of the opinion that the media is portraying a very negative image of Pakistan. He cited the example of Indian media which is painting a very ‘rosy’ picture of the country, poles apart from the ground realities. He asserted the need for a positive image of the country so that we can improve our financial and social conditions.

Social Bridges: What are your future plans?

Ahmed Sarwar: We have entered an agreement with the PSEB (Pakistan Software Export Board) whereby we’ll start an IT apprenticeship program. Under the program, administered and financed by PSEB, IT grads from any university of Pakistan can work at Teradata. We’ll also hire the outstanding lot among them.

Social Bridges: Any final comments?

Ahmed Sarwar: We need collaboration and partnerships among the industry. Whether its CSR, education or any other stuff, if we forge alliances we can do a lot for this country. So we at Teradata are ready for any such socially responsible partnerships; a common platform.

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