A DEVON woman will soon be one of a handful of workers handling maritime emergencies around the world from the comfort of her home.
Gloria Payge, of Rockbeare, near Exeter, is among 16 specially-trained people who will be employed by a South West company to react to disasters at sea.
Gloria works for teleBIZZ, a Plymouth firm which has just won a prestigious contract to ad as an emergency response centre for a global fleet of ships run by leading oil company BP! It will establish a network of home based remote workers using the latest broadband technology to provide immediate response 24 hours a day 365 days a year. The company which is run by husband-and-wife team Nick Lunn and Gillie Scherr, eventually hopes to create 100 jobs.
Its project has received a £25,000 award from Broadband4Devon, a multi-million pound public and private sector broadband partnership made up of, among others, BT, Devon County Council and Exeter University.
Gloria said: "I can see tremendous job opportunities for home-based workers such as myself.
"Not only can we act as a Virtual Receptionist, but I am working with Gillie to develop this one step further and also offer a virtual personal assistant for many of their other business needs."
Gillie Scherr said: "The winning of this contract is a fantastic victory, not only for teleBIZZ, but also for the South West and technology. It shows high-speed broadband technology can be used to create highly-skilled jobs in places where such initiatives would have been inconceivable just a few years ago."
"The first person to speak to a person reporting an emergency could well be one of our representatives, who will need to act with the highest standards of professionalism."
"Very importantly, we will have created an infrastructure to provide 24/7 services for other organisations."
"It could be another multinational company of simply a plumber or electrician offering a 24-hour call-out service."