The Hindu Business Line : Bomb scare at ITPL in Bangalore — Staff evacuated; 50,000 man-hours lost

CLOSE to 18,000 employees of 110 different IT and BPO firms were evacuated from the International Technology Park Ltd (ITPL) at Whitefield here following a bomb scare on Monday afternoon.

Police said, after a thorough check of the ITPL premises, the alarm was found to be hoax and investigations were under way. ITPL authorities had received an e-mail around 3 p.m. stating that explosives would go off at one of the offices housed in the park, following which they sounded a security alert that resulted in evacuation of about 90 per cent of the employees by 3.30 p.m.

Major companies operating from ITPL include TCS, Infineon, Misys, IBM Global, Cable and Wireless, 24/7 Customer, among others. These companies could have lost about 50,000 man-hours due to the hoax.

Though several firms expect to make up the loss of a few working hours, companies operating on the 24/7 real time basis had to depend on their nearest business continuity centres to hand over their operations.

"We have a full fledged business continuity plan in place and our operations have been taken over by the centre in Hong Kong," said Mr Anirudh Prabhakaran, Director of Cable & Wireless India Ltd. The telecommunications firm has some 400 employees working from ITPL serving about 140 customers in the country.

The country's largest software exporter TCS had to send home about 3,000 of its employees early on Monday following the bomb hoax. A TCS spokesperson said the company has taken adequate safety precautions and there was no major impact on its operations due to the incident.

"There was no real panic and employees walked out coolly following the instructions of ITPL authorities," said Mr Jagadish Bapat, head of HR at Misys, which develops software for banking and healthcare industry. "Though we lost out couple of working hours, we hope to make it up tomorrow," he said.

Mr V. Bharatwaj, AVP sales and global marketing, 24/7 Customer, said the company's operations were not affected. About one per cent of the BPO firm's processes were handled from the ITPL office, mainly in the night. "After the police clearance, ITPL authorities were allowing employees to work late in the evening, which should help us to carry on the operations," he said.

It may be recalled that early this year similar hoax calls were made to two of the premier IT companies, Infosys Technologies and Wipro.

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