The one-stop solution for the citizens of the State capital, ‘1929 Bhubaneswar Helpline’, has gone 24X7 once again from Monday with 30 call centre executives managing it at the Bhubaneswar Operations Centre of the Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL).
The helpline is a collaborative effort of the BMC, the BSCL and the BDA to help citizens during the pandemic. The call centre executives are now work in three shifts from 8am to 2 pm, 2 pm to 10 pm and in the night shift.
Earlier, the helpline was operating from March 19 to June 28 on three shifts, but then there were only incoming calls to manage. However, during June 29 to July 15 the call centre was not operational with a drastic drop in positive cases and the executives were shifted to the BMC Covid Control Room.From July 16, the 1929 Call Centre started working in two shifts and managed to handle 30,643 outgoing calls and 2,533 incoming calls till September 6.BMC Commissioner Prem Chandra Chaudhury decided to restart the ‘1929 Bhubaneswar Helpline’ in the 24X7 mode again from September 7 in view of positive cases rising.
Now, the helpline would handle all queries related to Covid-19 pandemic and information service, counselling by trained psychologists and psychiatric social worker, medical and health advice and grievance redressal. While the Information Service delivery involves providing details on the public health service providers/institutions, diagnostic services, Covid Care Centres, Covid Care Homes and dedicated COVID hospitals, the trained psychologists and psychiatric social worker would deal with stress, depression, anxiety and post-trauma recovery counselling.
Health advice teams would deal with cough, cold, fever, dietary and nutritional counselling and hygiene related issues. Four doctors would join the call centre for this purpose very soon. The grievance redressal would take up complaint registration about person/institutions relating to deficiency in public service and negligence etc. in Government-run health-care institutions.