Maharashtra Forest Department: Soon, reporting animal cruelty to be a call away

Mumbai: If you’ve been waiting for the issues you face while reporting any incident against animal cruelty, to resolve, your wait is almost over. The state forest officials are set to inaugurate the first ever call centre in the country, on January 6, 2017, to not only address people but also to guide them and cross-check how quickly their reports or complaints were addressed. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis is likely to do the inauguration in Nashik.

State forest minister Sudhir Mungantiwar, explained, “The centre is ready to be inaugurated and all technical arrangements have been made. It will be either be inaugurated on January 6 or on 7 in Nashik as we have a major meeting in Nashik at this time. Either the CM or our staff will do the inauguration.”

The main aim of this service is to deal with critical information in real time. Praveen Srivastava, Assistant Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Information Technology & Policy) said that the inauguration was tentatively scheduled on January 6. Speaking about the service Mr Srivastava said, “We are expecting positive response from people as this platform will give freedom to them to come up with their ideas in order to handle a situation in their area.”

In a first in India, Maharashtra forest department has set up a 24/7 helpline to respond to emergencies related to wild animals and reptiles and also to attend to enquiries. A specially trained team of eight will man the helpline call-centre in Goregaon (west), while two coordinators, based in Nagpur and Pune, will supervise the work. The helpline will deal with emergencies by letting the caller speak to the officials concerned and will give an update, to the latter, on action taken on the information provided. It will be operational in 10 days after its inauguration.

The toll free numbers: 1926 or 1800225364 will serve those seeking help. This centre has eight people in the call- centre who will be working in order to attend the callers and help them with their queries.

These eight people, recruited by the service provider- SAAR IT Resources Pvt. Ltd., have been trained by the forest department and have been given frequently asked questions (FAQs) too.