After three rounds of meeting at various levels, IT companies having offices in Cyberabad have come to a collective decision to facilitate staggered departure of their employees in the event of heavy rain during evening peak hours.
The industry, in coordination with GHMC and Cyberabad traffic police, will issue rain and traffic alerts to employees and advise them to delay their departure so as not to get beleaguered in traffic.
At a press conference on Saturday. Hyderabad Software Enterprises Association (HYSEA) president Murali B. shared details of the protocol to be followed in the event of rain alerts.
Accordingly, three rain alerts would be issued based on climatological information received from automatic weather stations in the city.
The first alert will be issued 24 hours before the expected rain, to the facility managers of various IT companies, through WhatsApp groups.
The second alert would come two hours ahead of rain and it would be shared with all employees by facility heads.
Third advisory would be issued by the traffic police, 15 to 30 minutes into the rain, about the routes to avoid and traffic diversion, if any.
The companies were advised to install and utilise public address system for quick and wide dissemination of information.
‘Totally voluntary’
Delayed departure would be totally voluntary, and no one would be forced to stay back, said Vice-President of HYSEA and Vice-Chairman of Cyberabad Security Council Bharani Kumar Aroll.
However, release of buses carrying the employees home would be controlled by facility heads of larger companies, who would work in tandem with traffic police to determine how many buses would leave from which campus and at what time.
It would be recommended that the employees download ‘My GHMC’ App for direct alerts from GHMC.
Three rounds of meeting have been conducted by GHMC with representatives of IT companies in Hitech City and surrounding areas, after the heavy rain last Friday, which had clogged the roads, and resulted in tedious traffic jam.
GHMC Commissioner M. Dana Kishore said alerts beforehand could help make better decisions at individual and collective levels.
Seeking to allay fears about the beating the ‘Brand Hyderabad’ image had taken after last Friday’s rain had exposed the infrastructural chinks, Mr. Dana Kishore said Hyderabad was surging ahead of Bengaluru in terms of office space, going by the figures of the first quarter of this year.
Heavy rain could cause similar water-logging in villages too, which was not much talked about owing to fewer number of people staying there, he said.
Civic infrastructure needed improvement in 11 municipalities that were recently merged in the GHMC, he said. Cyberabad Police Commissioner V.C.Sajjanar too was present at the meeting.
