New Delhi,  Global software major Cognizant on Friday announced an additional payment of 25 per cent of the base pay for April for employees up to 'Associate level in India and the Philippines in the wake of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

This applies to more than two-thirds of the India workforce and the company would review the approach monthly, it said in a statement.

"As you've seen, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has imposed a nationwide 21-day lockdown in an attempt to contain the spread of the coronavirus. The Philippines is under a state of national emergency. We support these and other efforts by governments across the world to "flatten the curve" and contain the spread of COVID-19," Brian Humphries, CEO, Cognizant said in an email sent to employees.

The additional 25 per cent of base pay will be processed with the April paycheck for employees.

"Cognizant has enabled work from home for the majority of its offshore teams to ensure employee health and safety, and to maintain continuity of service for our clients, while safeguarding their data and protecting access to their systems," Humphries added.

The work from home measures include provisioning new laptops and encrypting desktops and moving them to associate homes, enabling the use of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), providing additional bandwidth connectivity and air cards.

Cognizant in February expanded its operations in Karnataka with a development centre at Mangaluru. The new 1,000 sq ft facility can accommodate more than 1,100 employees.

The tech major delivers consulting, enterprise applications and business process services for mortgage processing encompassing property taxes, research and investigations, property data warehousing and others.

In Mangaluru, Congnizant employs nearly 600 people. As many as 28,000 people work for the company is Bengaluru and 700 in Mysuru.