Lucknow: As the crime against foreign nationals and tourists rises in Uttar Pradesh, the Akhilesh government has decided to allow foreign complainants to file their complaints in their respective foreign languages.
The government has started the process of hiring foreign language experts to receive complaints from foreign complainants at the control room and then translate them into Hindi or English. The initiative may cost Rs 2,300 crore and will be operational by October this year.
Talking about the initiative, a senior police official said that a large number of foreign tourists and students had problems in lodging their complaints due to linguistic barriers. “As a result, minor complaints of eve teasing, harassment, theft and even stalking go unreported as our cops are not conversant even with English, leave alone foreign languages. With the new system in place, the foreign complainants can give their complaints in their mother tongue and our experts will translate the same. If there is any need for further communication, we can communicate with them in their own language”, the official said.
The state government is planning to hire 750 women who can understand some foreign languages and have good communication skills. These women will be deployed at emergency call centres.
The state wide dial-100 facility from a single centre in Lucknow will handle emergency calls related to criminal offences, fire incidents, traffic woes and road accidents. ADG Anil Agarwal, who is overseeing the projects, said that the tender inviting application for these posts states that “the call-taking staff should be a mix of communication officers who understand major foreign languages”.
“Lot of Buddhist followers visit eastern UP and so we decided to keep Thai language as compulsory,” he said. A team of IPS officials are also identifying professors and PhD scholars from linguistic departments of varsities. Their numbers will be kept handy and a conference call will be arranged to tackle calls from complaints in less known foreign languages.
