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Cape Town - Residents of the City of Tshwane could soon be safer as a new Uber-like smartphone security application goes live on Monday.
Project Namola will begin the national trial of an application designed to increase safety for residents in the Monument Park area.
"The Tshwane Metro Police Chief has given us the go-ahead to launch the pilot in Monument Park," Craig Rivett of Ever Africa told Fin24 about the project which has been under development for several months.
The application is free to Android phone users and works similar to the Uber ride hailing application.
Once the app is installed on your smartphone, you simply hit the button if you're feeling unsafe and a Metro police member will respond within minutes.
Metro cops have GPS-enabled smartphones mounted on the dash of their vehicles and the software can determine which vehicle is closest in order to efficiently respond and not duplicate resources.
Crime prevention
Project Namola is closely aligned with the StellieSafe project proposed for Stellenbosch, but differs in that the latter utilises private security contractors as well as police.
Rivett explained that the project's delay was, in part, to demonstrate how the partnership between the organisation could work to prevent crime in SA.
"During the StellieSafe development process we realised that for an initiative like this to scale fast and to have a much broader impact on addressing crime for everyone, it has to be done with the public sector."
Project Namola will launch officially on February 9 at 12:00 and will run for five weeks where developers will evaluate the technology and potential hiccups.
They have appealed that people only use the technology for police emergencies during the initial roll-out.
"Namola is not for fire, medical or other emergencies. Also, no false alarms please."
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