Wednesday, December 29 2004 16:08 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Cuddalore (TN): When the magnitude of the Tsunami that hit the Tamil Nadu coast became known by Sunday afternoon (Dec 26, 2004), two software engineers working for an IT firm in Bangalore did not think twice as they packed their bags and landed in Cuddalore.

During the last two days, they are assisting the district administration in coordinating the relief work using the power of information technology.

Sriram Raghavan, president of CONMAT Technologies and his colleague Sudhakar Chandra are helping the Cuddalore district administration in creating a database of the requirements of various areas in the relief activities, besides updating the stocks of clothes, food, water and medicines that are coming from various places.

"One of the major problem an administration faces during a calamity of this nature is in coordinating and streamlining the relief activities. We are assisting the administration in preparing the data base of the stocks at the disposal, by feeding it into the computers," said Chandra, who works as 'chief evangelist' (Government services) at Conmat Technologies, an IT firm in the E-governance space.