Government to open three new Child helpline Centres

Government has decided to open three new child helpline centres in Kolkata, Gurgaon and Chennai which will cover 500 cities and towns to provide prompt help to distressed children across the country.
In 1996, Childline-the 24-hour helpline was started in Mumbai. Currently, it reaches out to 282 locations across India with the help of 543 partners, among which are the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and Tata Consultation Services (TCS).
But, it is becoming difficult for the Mumbai centre to attend to all the calls made to the helpline, resulting in many calls getting abandoned. It only covered calls from North and West (India) effectively.
Now by introducing 3 more centres, will help to reduce burden of Mumbai centre and help to cater all calls from children in the South and East. Thus, help to cover entire country effectively.
The three new centres would be nodal bases providing service to the rest of the locations. The service reach of the new centres will be expanded to 500 cities and towns in next two years.
This Childline, can be reached on the number-1098 and so far this year received 38,22,081 calls of which 4 per cent were about missing children.
With all the regional centres in place, the service would become more prominent as anyone can immediately contact the nearest NGO to reach out to the child to provide prompt help.

Month: Current Affairs - November, 2014