1929 Call Centre At Bhubaneswar Smart City: Major Helping Hand In COVID Management

Bhubaneswar : Contributing a major stake towards the management of the COVID-19 pandemic situation in the city, the “1929 Call Centre’’ at the Bhubaneswar Operations Centre (BOC) of the Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) has handled nearly 700 incoming calls from citizens of the Smart City and made around 6,000 calls to assist people facing difficulties due to the Novel Corona virus disease.

For the smooth functioning of the “1929 Call Centre’’ at Smart City office and to make it more responsive the authorities of BCSL have arranged two shifts duty every day since July 16 under the leadership of Chief Executive Officer, BSCL, Prem Chandra Chaudhary.

While the first shift starts at 8 am and continues till 2 pm, the second shift starts at 2 pm and concludes at 10 pm.

A shift to handle the incoming queries and outgoing calls is managed by four staff designated for the duty by BSCL with great patience, understanding and efficiency arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic situation in the city. The staff deployed at the “1929 Call Centre’’ handle calls especially on five categories:

1. Monitoring of home isolation cases
2. Overall monitoring and feedback from possible cases in different COVID care facilities or hospitals across the city
3. Flight travelers coming to the city through the Biju Patnaik International Airport (BPIA)
4. Taking feedback from the Corona frontline warriors i.e. doctors, enforcement teams, shifting staff and home quarantine teams
5. Patients in intensive care units (ICUs)

It can be mentioned here that the relevant information is given to the Central COVID Control Room at BMC by 11 am everyday for the necessary coordination and follow-up activities.

As a more empathetic development the Health and Family Welfare Department has provided the services of two clinical psychologists and one psychiatric social worker from the De-Addiction Centre of the Capital Hospital Bhubaneswar, for the “1929 Call Centre’’ so that the concerns of the affected persons due to Novel Corona virus would be handled with care, and they will be comforted.

Earlier during the previous lockdowns ending June 15, the “1929 Call Centre’’ handled more than 9,500 calls. During this phase it also played a pivotal role in making a swift inter-departmental coordination process for effective COVID management.

The BOC which is inside the BSCL office at fifth floor of the BMC Bhawani Mall in Saheed Nagar is the Intelligent City Operations and Management Centre, which is part of the Smart Solutions Project of the Bhubaneswar Smart City Proposal. It is planned to make it a state-of-the art facility to integrate data feed from and to the city-level agencies and government departments and also to provide better citizen interface for incident management.