Psychiatrists to aid govt call centre staff helping migrants

Apr 27, 2020, 05:00 IST

Ranchi: Poonam Kumari, a call-centre operator at the government-run helpline for migrant workers, was left teary-eyed after receiving a call from a stranded labourer in Uttar Pradesh. The man said he had only Rs 100 left with him and he gave it away to help another man. Kumari said, “I felt bad that I could not help the starving man. I, literally, couldn’t sleep for days after receiving the call.”
Poonam is not alone. Many among the 180 helpline workers of the call centre run by the state labour department at the Nepal House were reported to be suffering from anxiety and mental depression. A team leader at the call centre, Johnson Topno, said that they are now taking help of psychiatrists to keep their employees in good mental health.
Topno said, “We have attended as many as 33,000 calls from March 27 and helped around 9.4 lakh people stranded in other states. But some calls leave us exasperated. Often we also get calls where people abuse us, while in some cases callers try to play a prank.”
Topno added, “Sensing the growing anxiety among call centre workers here, we asked Unicef, which is another stakeholder in this project, for help. The Unicef, in turn, coordinated with the Central Institute of Psychiatry (CIP), Ranchi, and has arranged de-stressing sessions.”
On Friday, a mental de-stressing session was held for 60 people. Again on Monday, a similar session will be held. An associate professor at CIP, Dr Nishant Goel, said, “It was necessary to have a session with the call-centre workers. In the first session, we answered all the queries of participants and advised them to meditate. The other suggestion we gave them was to change their mindset. They must realise that they cannot directly help the stranded workers. They can only share the information with the departments concerned so that help reaches the migrants.”
Priti Srivastava of Unicef said, “Staying mentally fit is equally important for call centre workers here, who are playing a key role in providing assistance to the stranded migrants during the nationwide lockdown.”