•By July 21 the call centre has received 1,21,428 incoming calls
•Executives have made 1,81,278 outgoing calls from the facility
Odisha News Today Bureau:
Proving its mettle as an important establishment to help citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic, the 1929 24X7 City Call Centre of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation has managed more than 3 lakh calls by the day ending yesterday. The Call Centre by July 21 has managed 3, 02,706 calls including incoming and outgoing calls.
While the Call Centre has received 1,21,428 incoming calls, its executives have made 1,81,278 outgoing calls from the facility, which is running from the Bhubaneswar Operations Centre of the Bhubaneswar Smart City office. Interestingly, during this period the Call Centre has shifted 8,027 patients to various dedicated COVID hospitals across the city.
It can be mentioned here that while the 1929 24X7 City Call Centre has contacted 1,44,053 COVID affected patients, who were in home isolation, its executives also made 28,561 calls to frontline COVID warriors in Bhubaneswar to know their vaccination status.
Apart from handling of incoming and outgoing calls, the City Call Centre is also helping citizens in vaccination related queries, supply of oxygen concentrators, issuing discharge certificates after the mandatory home isolation period, cremation of their kin and death certificate. Recently the vaccination queries relating to bed-ridden patients at home, physically challenged persons at home, vaccination for senior citizens through pick and drop facility, vaccination for foreign-bound students for their higher studies, expectant mothers and those facing problem of documentation of their vaccination certificates.
BMC Commissioner and Smart City CEO Sri Sanjay Kumar Singh said “the 1929 Call Centre has helped people immensely during the pandemic and now it has a greater scope to extend its help. I wish it would help each caller who would ring up the helpline number.’’
*DOCTOR’S CONSULTATION:*
Apart from all the types of incoming calls coming to the 1929 24X7 Call Centre, many are related to doctors’ consultation as patients want to talk to the doctors directly. COVID positives under Home Isolation, patients wanting to shift to hospitals mainly want to have doctors’ consultation and the doctors on the shift provide all help with patience. In fact, the counselling by the doctors is divided into two types, i.e. medicine consultation and psychological counselling. It is an important achievement to have more than 38,365 incoming calls being referred to doctors’ consultation.
*THE CALL CENTRE:*
Apart from the doctors, 48 executives are working in three shifts in different groups to handle both the incoming and outgoing calls at the facility. The Call Centre works in three shifts, i.e. 6 am to 2 pm, 2 pm to 10 pm and between 10 pm and 6 am respectively. The calls are managed through 35 work stations. While 15 are used for receiving incoming calls and 5 for outgoing ones, 8 are used by doctors to give consultation. The 1929 24X7 City Call Centre started functioning from March 25 this year when the Corona graph was not so alarming.
*(EOM)*