Their sense of relief at working from home (WFH) as heavy rain pounded many places in the city on Tuesday turned out to be short-lived for many in the IT workforce since little work was possible amid the accompanying power cuts.
Night shift operations were impacted, Hyderabad Software Enterprises Association (HYSEA) president Bharani Kumar Aroll said, estimating 10% of those WFH were not able to work.
The impact of the rain on the work in IT companies during the day was not much, but things changed by the evening, he said, referring to the findings of a sample data collected by HYSEA from IT companies of varying sizes.
Power outage was not the only issue as water logging also came in the way. Many of the IT employees, however, ensured WFH by shifting to another location where power supply was available.
“This morning, we worked with government on getting the power up and running [and] getting update that power was restored from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.,” he said on Wednesday.
The power cuts also saw some WFH taking to social media to highlight their plight.
A resident of Madhuranagar in Yousufguda, tweeted to TSSPDCL, saying: “Hello, There is an outage even after the rain has stopped. We don't have power since last night 7 p.m. Please come and fix it. Its really difficult since I am working from home I need power to work.”
Another person asked how to work from home? No light for five hrs. There is lot of pressure from company to complete work, he said in his tweet to the power utility about the power outage in Bagh-e-jahara.
For those with access to stable power connection, WFH proved to be a boon. “One big consolation is that because of Work from home, the horrors of being stuck in and around Hitech city for hours has been avoided this monsoon,” another tweet said.
In the IT hub of Hyderabad, primarily Gachibowli and neighbouring areas there was not much impact of the rain, except the power cuts. There was not much of water logging on the arterial roads, especially the stretch of Old Mumbai Highway. The compound wall of Indian Immunologicals campus was damaged at least in two places.
In the nearby Kondapur, the rain compounded the misery of road users already grappling with bad roads. Serilingampally MLA Gandhi Arekapudi also tweeted pictures of his visit to many rain affected areas, including the Serilingampally division, to monitor the flood relief measures.
The government had declared October 14 and 15 as holiday for all government offices, private institutions, including banks and financial Institutions under the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, due to unprecedented incessant rains, except for the staff and offices engaged in relief and emergency services.
Sources in the banking industry, however, said it was only after 1 p.m. the order was passed on to the branches following which the facilities closed and the employees left for the day early. In State Bank of India facilities in the city, around 30-40% of the staffers were unable to attend due to rain, an official said.
