The helpline 1098 used to be said as Childline which has now been referred as Children Helpline.
The Government said, the helpline for Children will continue to serve and it’s integration with national emergency number 112 will ensure interoperability and help in enhancing the wideness of emergency services available to children.
The Ministry of Women and Child Development, Smriti Irani, said that the Ministry would continue to serve the helpline 1098 strictly according to the provisions of Juvenile Justice Act 2015. It also said that the child would be provided necessary help as soon as calls made to 1098, at present. However, advanced technological integration with Emergency Response Support System (ERSS) 112 would ‘magnify the scope of access to ERSS through voice call, SMS GPS and GIS enabled’.
The Ministry said but there were some limitations in functioning of 1098, for which steps have taken to improve it. The existing 1098 is limited to only 603 districts out of 750 plus districts in India. The process to reach a child takes about one hour which is not satisfactory. The call logs are maintained manually and lack interoperability with other services like police, fire, ambulance, which leads to loss of precious time in distress situations.
It will have additional solutions such as voice calls, SMS, intelligent call distribution, conferencing the calls, digital logging of voice conversations, caller location identification and feedback mechanism.
