TURA: Childline 1098 is looking to extend its services to 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, 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 the toll free number-1098 to avail emergency services.
The service is managed on a partnership model with registered non-government organisations and a Childline Advisory Board has to be set up with Deputy Commissioner as chairperson for it to function at the district level.
While welcoming the decision of the ministry to include SWGH, Ramkumar said that there is 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 especially taking into account the challenges of having 24×7 services. He instead suggested that integrating Childline with established agencies like One Stop Crisis Centre would be better.
Meanwhile, a discussion and mapping of vulnerable areas in CP issues was carried out which took into account the feedback of the officials and NGOs present during the meeting for developing a workable 1098 service in the district.
