Call center evacuated due to bomb threat

A bomb threat prompted officials of a call center in Mandaluyong City to suspend its operations and evacuate at least 1,000 employees from the building yesterday.

Armed with K-9 bomb sniffing dogs, police officers from the Eastern Police District (EPD) explosives and ordnance division (EOD) scoured the Accenture Call Center office in the Robinson’s Cybergate Tower 1 at the corner of Pioneer street and EDSA but failed to find the bomb.

“We scoured the building for bombs starting at the 27th floor down but no bomb was found,” said EPD director Chief Superintendent Leon Nilo de la Cruz.

Initial investigation showed that an employee identified as Monette Papelyero received at 12:30 a.m. yesterday a series of text messages from an unknown texter claiming that a bomb was placed inside a locker on the 22nd floor of the building and will explode any moment.

Papelyero immediately relayed the text messages to the call center’s security chief, Angel Calixto of the Global Security Agency, who in turn called the attention of the EPD.

While waiting for the police to arrive, Calixto and his American counterpart, Tim Weir, decided to temporarily suspend the operations of the call center and have their employees evacuated to safer ground.

An EPD-EOD team headed by SPO4 Demetrio Marero arrived in the scene minutes later. The employees started returning to their respective posts at 3:30 a.m. after Marero and his team declared the building safe. – Non Alquitran