Alappuzha, Sunday 9 January 2011: State Chief Minister, V S Achuthanandan has today inaugurated the first phase of the Cherthala Infopark at Pallipuram village in Alappuzha district. Achuthanandan also laid the foundation stone for building the Working Women’s hostel and Day Care Centre at the event.

The Cherthala Infopark is located in 66 acres of land at Pallipuram village, near Cherthala of which 60 acres are notified as Special Economic Zone (SEZ).

Kerala IT and Infopark have set an all time record of inaugurating a major public sector grass root facility in less than 2 years time from foundation stone laying Infoparks CEO, Ishita Roy said.

The building will cater to the software and BPO companies and is expected to have nearly 80 per cent of the jobs reserved for local candidates. The first phase of the new IT building will accommodate around 1000 to 1400 IT professionals, she said.

The Working Women’s hostel with a Day Care Centre planned in Cherthala Infopark will have accommodation facilities for 300 working women with 171 rooms in a built up area of 55,000 sq.ft. ‘With this hostel we hope to meet the accommodation problem of women employees of the park to some degree.” Ishita Roy said.

The remaining 1.4 lakh square feet of the building will be functional from May this year. When fully completed, the building will accommodate around 2000 to 2800 professionals.

The building boasts of facilities such as incubation centre, conference hall, bank, ATM, cafeteria, dining hall. Part of the building will be developed as plug and play facility for the benefit of small and medium players.

The building will be fully air conditioned and provided with 100% back up power, fire protection, high speed machine room less lifts, etc. Energy saving measures such as recycling of treated water for air conditioning and building management system, energy saving lighting system, etc. have been incorporated. BSNL had already provided connectivity.

The work for providing Reliance connectivity is in progress. The park when fully completed will have provision for employment of around 20000 IT employees in a built up area of 2 million sq.ft at estimated investment of around Rs 500 crore.