Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee while inaugurating the Kolkata police pavilion at the Book Fair on Thursday praised a model of miniature traffic sergeants riding Dial-100 bikes and said she would like to own such a miniature herself.
The Dial-100 bikes were launched by Kolkata police last year to reduce the response time for reaching a spot when a distress call lands at the city police headquarters in Lalbazar.
The model that intrigued the chief minister comprised several miniature sergeants in white uniform on small motorcycles with a cut-out of a woman taking calls like in a call centre.
An officer said after inaugurating the pavilion, Mamata walked to the model and asked questions about how the Dial-100 system runs.
The officers explained to the chief minister about the concept of Dial-100 and informed her about the relatively new Dial-100 bikes.
“She praised the concept and expressed eagerness to own one such small model of a traffic sergeant on a Dial-100 motorcycle,” said an officer.
Mamata also asked the police to display the state’s anti-ragging helpline number (18003455678) at the stall.
The Dial-100 service, an emergency reaction tool, receives dozens of calls every day, most of which are actionable calls that need active police involvement.
A new software enables officers to access the live location of the caller.
“If the caller is safe and in a position to talk, the person’s location can be taken directly. But if the caller is unable to speak properly, we earlier had to rely on the location details shared by the telecom service provider concerned. Sometimes, this took a while,” said an officer.
The information is shared with the local police station where the Dial-100 bikes are kept on standby.
The officer said the bikes had been inducted to reduce the response time.