TURA: Childline 1098 is looking to extend its services to the district of South West Garo Hills and a meeting in this regard was held with the officials of the line departments and local NGOs under the chairmanship of the Deputy Commissioner Ramkumar S at Ampati recently.
Presenting the proposed expansion of Childline services in five more districts of Meghalaya including SWGH, Ms Leena Basu, Representative of Childline Kolkata, highlighted the functioning of Childline, a nodal agency under Union Ministry of Women & Child Development with a centrally controlled free emergency telephone & outreach child protection service. Any child in distress can call toll free1098 emergency service.
The service is managed on a partnership model with registered non-govt organizations and a Childline Advisory Board has to be set up with Deputy Commissioner as Chairperson into have the service functioning at a district level.
DC Ramkumar S, while welcoming the decision of the Ministry to include SWGH for expansion of Childline service, said there is indeed a need for such a service as there are quite a number of child abuse and child protection issues in the District. He however expressed his concerns about Childline partnering with a local based NGO considering the challenges of having 24×7 service with fully committed staff with financial implications. He instead suggested that integrating the Childline with established agencies like One Stop Crisis Centre that can offer the logistic support would be a better model for the districts and rural areas because there is dearth of established, mature organizations in the district that can handle emergency child protection issues. Later a discussion and mapping of vulnerable areas in CP issues was carried out with the feedback of the officials and NGOs present at the meeting for developing a workable 1098 service in the district and the same would placed before the Ministry for further action.