Sudipto Mondal/The Hindu

• ‘It can be reached only on BSNL, Tata Indicom landlines’ 
• Childline is not accessible from outside Mangalore
• Helplines are generally not reachable in city

Mangalore, Jul 29: “Someone who cares is a phone call away”, is the tagline of a 24-hour helpline created to attend to cases of child abuse, 1098 - the childline. It aims at helping the children in distress.

But more often than not this helpline is not accessible. M. Mahendra (26) told The Hindu that he found a group of children below 14 years begging near the Central Railway Station here and immediately dialled 1098 from his cellphone. But he heard a pre-recorded voice stating: “You seem to have dialled a wrong number.” He then called up a friend and requested him to call the childline from a landline.

“How can an emergency helpline be inaccessible for cellphones? It defeats the very spirit of the emergency line concept,” Mr. Mahendra said. When 1098 was dialled from The Hindu on Sunday, Jairam Rai, telephone operator who received the call at the hlpline headquartered at Kankanady here, revealed a more disconcerting fact. He said childline could be accessed only from BSNL landline and rarely from a Tata Indicom landline. It was not accessible through any other means or through cellphones, Mr. Rai said.

He said that the childline was not accessible from outside Mangalore city. Mr. Rai claimed that the YMCA, which had been entrusted with the responsibility of handling the childline, had made several requests to the BSNL authorities here to make the helpline accessible to everyone but nothing had happened. He said that Ms. Lakshmi was the coordinator of the childline and that he was just a staffer working for the helpline. Ms. Lakshmi, however, refused to come on line and passed on a message through Mr. Rai that Sunday being a holiday, she would not speak to anybody.

Subsequently, it was discovered that the emergency lines such as the fire service (101), Ambulance (102), distress helpline (2432656), and women’s helpline (1091) could not be reached from a cellphone.

S.M. Hegde, assistant general manager and public relations officer of Dakshina Kannada Telecom District said: “We have not received any complaints in this regard, so far.” He said that the mobile switching centre of his company was based in Bangalore and calls from cellphones could be enabled only from there.