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Why is mobile office equipment needed?When you picture people sending emails and writing reports you probably think of them sitting at a desk in an office. But for our special emergency staff that's often not possible. They might find themselves sitting in a vehicle with their laptop plugged into the car battery, or working in a refugee camp with no electricity, using their laptop battery and sat-phone to keep in touch. Good IT equipment is really important for our staff to function. Laptops and sat-phones enable key staff to stay in touch, access important information and agree decisions quickly. What difference has this equipment been making to Oxfam's work?N Hari Krishna is a Programme Coordinator based in Hyderabad, India. After the tsunami in December 2004, he was one of the first people to assess what had happened.
"I reached the tsunami hit area on 27 December...the full picture was yet to emerge. Rescue operations were in full swing. I was expected to make a rapid appraisal and send it across immediately to our emergency team in Oxford, via Hyderabad and Delhi. I had met lots of people, collected stories from the regional press, and interviewed some of the affected families. All that information was stored in my notebook and needed to be converted into a report that could be [shared with other people]. There were few computer stations in the small towns like Nagapatnam and Karaikal and those there were were shut for the first few days. In such a situation the laptop that I carried was found to be a great help. I used it to key in my notes when I reached the hotel at night. Then I read it out or faxed it or emailed it wherever possible in the first hours of the next morning, before setting on to another round of visits." Why should we keep providing laptops and sat phones?Sadly emergencies keep happening, and keep hitting poorer people the hardest. Until we can find a way to make poverty history, Oxfam will still have an important role to play in helping people recover. Without special mobile office equipment such as laptops and sat phones, our staff would find their jobs much harder to do. We want to make sure that they can make telephone calls and use the internet the way you can everyday!
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