Bihar Prashasnik Sudhar Mission Society in Patna. Picture by Nagendra Kumar Singh

Patna, April 25: After the launch of helpline Jigyasha at the state-level in September 2010 — to facilitate people about information pertaining to government officers who should be contacted for different kinds of work — the Bihar Prashasnik Sudhar Mission (BPSM) has now diversified the helpline in 20 districts.

BPSM is a joint venture of UK’s department for international development (DFID) and government of Bihar.

The helplines set up in districts are a little different from the one set up at the state headquarters as these helplines also register complaints apart from guiding people as far as approaching different government offices for different kinds of work is concerned.

To ensure that the callers get the correct information from these helplines, the grievance redressal officers, hired on contract, have been deputed at the call centres set up to receive calls from people.

The grievance redressal officers, hired on contract basis, are the retired Bihar Administrative Service officers, who are well versed with the functioning of various government departments, which in turn help people in guiding to offices depending on the nature of queries. These helplines function on weekdays from 10am to 5pm and a system has been developed, which allows the helpline to record details about the caller and also the time of call.

“This has been done to keep tab on the functioning of the helplines as the district magistrate concerned can call back the callers to take feedback about the functioning of the helplines,” a senior BPSM official, on condition of anonymity, told The Telegraph.

BPSM is also planning to introduce some new features in a few districts on a trial basis. One among them is deputation of small team of mechanics so that minor public works could be get done by making a call to the district helpline. “For now, we have decided to depute one such team in the helpline functioning at Chhapra,” said the BPSM official, adding: “Like a fault in the electricity supply line can be get rectified by making a call to the helpline.”

Similarly, BPSM has decided to introduce interactive voice response system (IVRS) at the Nalanda district helpline, which would guide people to the officer concerned for getting a particular kind of work done.

Moreover, in early days, these helplines have reduced the workload of the main helpline set up at the state headquarters. “The average number of calls used to be around 400 earlier, but after making the district helplines functional the number of average calls to this helpline has come down to around 150,” said the BPSM official.

BPSM official said apart from giving information related to the state headquarter, the helpline would also be used for analysing the performance of the district helplines and also to formulate ways which could be used for improving the functioning of helplines set up in districts.