Secretary of Disaster Management, UT Ladakh Amit Sharma checks the live performance of Quick Deployable Antennas in Ladakh

LEH, October 17: Amit Sharma, Administrative Secretary Disaster Management, Relief, Rescue and Rehabilitation, Union Territory of Ladakh today checked the live performance of Quick Deployment Antennas (QDAs) today in the capital city Leh which can serve as vital sources of connectivity/communication through Satellite linkage at the time of disasters in different terrains when all others sources of communication fail, especially at the time of occurrence of natural disasters.

Amit Sharma, Secretary of DMRRR, Ladakh along with his team today visited the Emergency Operations Centre located at Leh wherein he took a live demo and checked the performance of QDAs when it was assembled by the EOC team and made functional for usage within a shortest time span of less than half an hour. The concerned engineers connected WiFi through QDA settings of transponders with proper positioning of antennas and also made Secretary connect over the internet through Satellite with a decent upload and download speed. A unique feature of these QDAs is that they even work with Inverters and Battery Backups in case of complete communication and power collapse during natural disasters.

It is disclosed by Amit Sharma DMRRR Ladakh that at present, UT of Ladakh possesses four such QDAs, two at EOCs as emergent communication source and the other two at respective district headquarters of Leh and Kargil, which can be utilised during the occurrence of natural disasters and they can help in dissemination much-needed information to and from vital sources for rescue and relief which is the utmost requirement at the time of occurrence of cloudbursts, earthquakes, floods or other kinds of disasters. He further mentioned that UT Ladakh can consider deploying more such Quick Deployable Antennas in other important sites due to the vast geographical spread of Ladakh UT in the near future.

The team who accompanied Secretary Amit Sharma during this live check and testing visit included Hughes India QDA Engineer Deepak Roul, Project Manager DMRRR Aafaq Hussain, Logistics Supervisor EOC Zahoor Ahmed and Habib Rizwani amongst others who were directed to ensure proper functioning of these vital QDA devices for usage at the time of disasters while ensuring that they remain in working condition throughout for disaster mitigation.