GUWAHATI, April 12 - The control room set up by the Assam Police to help out the distressed people of the State staying all over the country is flooded with calls and messages. So far, more than 28,000 such distress calls have been received most of which have been addressed.
Talking to The Assam Tribune, IPS officer Anand Prakash Tiwari, who is handling the control room, said it was set up to reach out to the people in need due to the nationwide lockdown and till this morning, more than 26,800 calls and messages from people stranded outside the State, while around 1,600 requests for help were received from within the State. Such requests are also being received in the control rooms set up by the police in all the districts.
Tiwari said when the lockdown was announced and the police set up the control room, a large number of people living in other states of the country were apprehensive and they wanted to return home. But now the calls and messages are coming with requests for different kinds of help. He said majority of the calls were received from people of Assam staying in the states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Telangana, Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, etc.
Giving some details of the issues dealt with by the police after receiving the distress calls, Tiwari said in one case, a person had to return to Assam from Bengaluru as quickly as possible because his mother had expired and he being the only son. The Assam Police got in touch with their counterparts in other states to facilitate his transportation to Assam by road.
In another case, a person from Assam had to get his five-year-old son operated upon in Mumbai and the Assam Police accordingly communicated with the Mumbai police to facilitate the same.
Tiwari said in most cases, people call up the control room when they face scarcity of essential items or medicines. There were also cases where people of Assam living outside could not go out to get money as the ATMs were located far off from where they live. He said whenever such calls are received by the control room, immediately the control rooms of the states concerned are contacted to help out those people in distress.
�The personal contacts of IPS officers are also used to expedite the process of reaching out to the people in distress. All the IPS officers have batch mates in other states and such contacts are also being used. Moreover, the Assam Police is also taking the help of non-government organisations,� he said.
Tiwari further said that virtual desks have also been created so that massages sent to the control room in Assamese can be translated immediately before forwarding those to the states concerned. Apart from calls and messages received by the control room directly from the distressed people, some are also sending requests through social media handles of the Assam Police and officers are also receiving messages from people. All those messages are also dealt with immediately.