Orphan, destitute, runaway, these street children have no one to turn to and nowhere to go. Now comes a new initiative through which help for these children in distress may be just a phone-call away.

From October 2 this year, telephone number 1098 is going to be exclusively reserved for children's helpline. Starting with 10 cities in 1998, `Child Line 1098', a 24-hour free telephone service for children in distress will come into operation. The concept of a telephone helpline for children is not new. Most developed countries have such a service and from their early years in school, children know that help in times of crisis is available at the push of a button.

In India, a similar service has been working in Mumbai since June 1966, run as an experimental project by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. The Mumbai Child Line has handled over 7,000 callsfrom children during its two years of existence. Of these a whopping 72 per cent of the calls were made by street children.

Inspired by the Mumbai experiment, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, known as the Ministry of Welfare in its earlier avatar, is hoping to replicate the service in 10 cities this year, and extend the services to another 20 cities across the country by 1999.

Having persuaded the telecom authorities to reserve the number 1098 uniformly across the country, the ministry has coordinated with a range of NGOs, the police and social welfare bodies to bring together the kind of resources that would be required to implement the helpline.

The line will be answered by a team of trained social workers. While child abuse in some form or other is prevalent in all sections of society, the focus of Child Line will be children on the street, neglected and delinquent children, since they are seen as the most vulnerable.