Wiproites missing, Premji safe in New York

BANGALORE: Four employees from Wipro Technologies, out of the seven who were

working in the World Trade Center on the fateful morning, are still missing. The

company has not been able to contact them as yet.

Meanwhile Wipro chairman Azim Premji, has been reported to be safe as are the

rest of its 46 employees. The company has confirmed their safety.

The four professionals, three men and a lady, were assumed to be working in

the 96th or 97th floor of the World Trade Center, at Marsh and McLennan, an

insurance company, Wipro's client.

In a press statement, the company stated, "Our heart goes out to the

families of those who have been affected. It is too early to make a reasonable

estimation of the impact. We at Wipro are not just distant observers, but as a

global organization have been very much touched by this disaster, with around 50

Wipro people present in New York at the time of this event."

It also adds, "As news broke, of the scale of the damage, Wipro, Santa

Clara quickly launched a crisis center and started trying to make contact with

all employees that were known to be in the New York area. We were successfully

able to establish contact with 46 of them, who are safe, but are still awaiting

news on rest. We are putting this information on our web site (www.wipro.com

) for friends and relatives to know."

Meanwhile, CIOL Bureau contacted Infosys, Texas Instruments in Bangalore,

Intel at New Delhi, Satyam at Hyderabad who said they had no personnel working

at WTC. They have however expressed grief and support to the US for this

terrorist act.

Fear, anger hovers over Hyderabad IT community

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on World Trade Center and the epitome of

ultimate security Pentagon, Hyderabad based IT community is also having its

share of shock. Nearly 25 employees of the city based Intelligroup were feared

to be trapped in the World Trade Center at the time of the attack.

Chief operating officer of the company MDS Bosco told CNS that it was a part

of the regular practice for the employees of Intelligroup to visit NYSE to offer

maintenance support. He also added that the details of those trapped in the

building are not known. "We are not even sure about the number of employees

usually between 15-25 employees visit the place on a regular basis," he

explained.

(With inputs from Zia Askari, CNS Hyderabad)