Donabate man’s Nepal relief role

MARTIN Dalton, who lives in Donabate, has had a busy month. Indeed it’s been non-stop on the phone, email and Skype, as Martin works for Concern Worldwide where he is the agency’s supply and logistics manager. Read his report below.

As soon as Concern decided to send a team to Nepal to help in the emergency response to the earthquakes there, I was on the phone and sending emails trying to arrange and put in place our emergency supply pipeline.

Within three days two of my logistics team were in Nepal. Concern now has a team of 12 working in the country.

One of my responsibilities is to source and transport goods and supplies for disasters such as the earthquake in Nepal.

The logistics team has to be available to travel immediately anywhere in the world to support emergency responses and then to stay there for at least six weeks.

Within days we had purchased approximately 230 metric tonnes of kit for Nepal, valued at about

?¬600,000. This is mainly household and hygiene kits and material for basic survival.

We have air freighted to Nepal goods from China and Dubai and trucked goods purchased locally and in neighbouring India has been the main focus for our supply needs to date. As well as purchasing goods from suppliers we also deployed our own prepositioned emergency stocks.

Concern keeps emergency stocks valued up to

?¬125,000 in Dubai while availing of free warehousing managed by the United Nations World Food Programme. Irish Aid keeps similar prepositioned stocks and some of these were kindly donated to Concern for use in the Nepal emergency.

For the last month I have been in contact several times a day with our people in Nepal and it’s only now that it has eased off. A big challenge has been the time difference between Ireland and Nepal, requiring the odd phone call at 4am Irish time to catch up with the guys. When I was 22 I first worked for Concern as a volunteer, managing transport and logistics in Ethiopia back in 1986. I was there for two years and later moved to North Sudan.

The team is always ready to move anywhere in the world at short notice and I am greatly impressed by how they never say no. Right now the Concern team in Nepal is working seven days a week, long hours and all the time moving to different locations. However, they are used to working in harsh and dangerous environments

In my current job it’s my role to stay in Dublin during the initial stage of an emergency, where I can manage Concern’s supply pipeline. But I have seen action in many of Concern’s programmes. In February I was in Liberia in a deputising role. I was also there last September providing logistics support. Back then, the Ebola outbreak was just beginning.

In the last 18 months I have also been in North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia. Everywhere I go I ensure that Concern’s transport and logistics support functions are working as efficiently as possible.

I am married with three school-going children so it requires a lot of organisation and indeed patience and understanding from my family. But these days most of the work is done from Concern’s offices in Dublin’s Camden Street.