Maharashtra to set up specialised unit to address women’s helpline calls
The state Woman and Child Development (WCD) department will also analyse caller data to build a comprehensive data bank, enhancing responsiveness and support.
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The state WCD has appointed 15 staff who are undergoing distress call training. Additionally, a separate helpline for reporting child-related crimes will be merged with a centralised Pune bureau.
In an attempt to ensure all distress calls from women are attended to, the Maharashtra government is establishing a specialised unit for women’s helpline number 181 that was set up in 2012 following the Delhi gang rape case but failed to take off.
The state Woman and Child Development (WCD) department will also analyse caller data to build a comprehensive data bank, enhancing responsiveness and support.
The state WCD has appointed 15 staff who are undergoing distress call training. Additionally, a separate helpline for reporting child-related crimes will be merged with a centralised Pune bureau.
According to Dr Anup Kumar Yadav, secretary of state WCD, the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development has enlisted the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) to implement the helpline and address its technical aspects. Representatives of C-DAC have developed the necessary computer system (software) for the helpline. The organisation focuses on research and development in the field of advanced computing technologies and applications.
“We want to create a centralised unit where we would have trained manpower to attend to the calls. Soon, we will also merge the distress calls with other emergency numbers… We have stationed the unit in Pune,” he said.
The child helpline number, which was being run by Childline NGO, will also be expanded under the same unit. “For the first time, there will be a separate unit for distress calls,” he added.
Other than providing quality care to women in need, the WCD department also wants to analyse the calls. “This analysis will be done by a specialised research and development team. With this data, we will know what needs more involvement and investigation,” he added.
As per the data accessed by The Indian Express, over 3,500 calls were recorded from Maharashtra in 2022-23 at the helpline number. During Covid-19, it had surged to 8,741 in 2020-21 and 5,742 in 2021-22 from 1,168 reported pre-pandemic in 2019-20.
The toll-free helpline number “181”, now operational in 34 states and Union territories, was launched after the December 16 gang rape protests to provide 24/7 emergency and non-emergency response to women in distress.
Sandhya Gokhale, member of FAOW (Forum Against Oppression of Women), said, “The helpline was supposed to work jointly with one-stop-crisis centres (Sakhi centres) to provide counselling. It is good that they are now revamping it; it was much-needed,” she said.
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