New Delhi: Dismissing reports of transferring the Child Helpline 1098 to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) said it would continue to operate the Childline while working on the proposed integration aimed at interoperability with Emergency Response Support System (ERSS) on 112.
The Ministry said it would continue to operate the Helpline 1098 in strict compliance with the provisions of Juvenile Justice Act 2015 and that calls on 1098 would land at Children Helpline of MWCD and the child would be provided necessary assistance as is being provided at present.
On the proposed changes, the Ministry said the move of interoperability between the Childline 1098 and ERSS 112 would ensure better integration with service delivery structures under JJ Act and would ensure prompt response. The Helpline 1098 has handled only 54.6 lac calls during the year 2021-22.
The existing Children helpline 1098 is limited to only 603 districts out of 750+ districts in the country. The process of reaching out to child takes about 60 minutes to respond to children’s distress calls which is absolutely unsatisfactory, it said.
The call logs are maintained manually and lack interoperability with other services like Police, Fire, ambulance services leading to loss of precious time in distress situations. "he Ministry intends to address these shortcomings in the new revamped system," the statement said.
The Children Helpline 1098 will continue to be administered by the Ministry. The back-end technological integration with the ERSS 112, is expected to enhance the scope of access to emergency response services through voice call, SMS, and be GPS and GIS enabled, it added.
This interoperability between the ERSS 112, and Children helpline 1098 will ensure that all distress calls for help for or by children if landing on 112 shall be transferred to the Childline in real time resulting in immediate response action. The detailed guidelines for operation of Childline are under process in the Ministry, the statement reasoned.
