Not many takers for Mohali police’s smartphone application for women

The company, Smart24X7 Response Services Pvt Ltd, runs similar services in several cities across India. During the launch of the application in Mohali, it had claimed that a user would be able to simultaneously contact the police, ambulance and fire services by pressing a single button on her/his mobile phone.

“With this application, the user has only to press the ‘panic’ button in the application and an emergency alert will be issued to the police and to the user’s near and dear ones. A photograph will automatically be clicked from the phone’s camera and sent with the alert, and the exact location of the user will be instantly known through his/her phone’s GPS. All this will help in saving crucial time when a resident is in trouble, and will especially help working women, school- and college-going girls, and elderly citizens,” company officials had said.

But a police official said, “The application was only connected to the police control room, not to any other emergency service. The first few days, we got a few test calls after which there was hardly any response. Maybe it was because there was not much publicity done. It could also be because the application is only for users of smart-phones and those who have good Internet connectivity. In fact, there are also some issues with the Internet in the police control room.”

Company officials claimed otherwise. Bhupinder Singh, a senior manager in the company, said, “The response in Mohali has been good. There are 3,800 users of the application in the district and six emergency alerts have been sent through the application so far, including a fire incident in Zirakpur, an accident in Phase 3B2, and another incident near Sector 81. In near future, we’ll be adding more features to the application, and we are also thinking of launching tablet-aided dispatch for PCR vans, like we are doing in Chandigarh.”

He said, “The response in Mohali is not poor, but only genuine alerts have been issued through the application. Users are instructed not to press the ‘panic’ button unless there is a real emergency.”

SP (Headquarters) Harpal Singh Sandhu said that he was not aware of the application as it was launched before he got posted in Mohali. “I’ll have to look it up,” he said.