Telangana State cops make cab travel safe for women

Hyderabad: In a first-of-its kind in the country, the people-friendly Telangana police have come up with an initiative to make the State safe for women to travel in cabs.

Director-General of Police (DGP) M Mahendar Reddy on Monday launched the initiative for the safety of commuters, especially women in Hyderabad and across the state by integrating police patrols with passenger cab services which provides access to an 'Emergency Button" to the passengers in the cab providers' app.

The DGP said it will help in prevention of crime and to control crime rate in the fast-growing Hyderabad city and will instil greater confidence among the women employees in IT and ITES industries who travel in cabs.

He appealed to the commuters to use the services and assured them 24x7 services. DGP said Hawk Eye launched earlier was getting good results as more than 22 lakh citizens downloaded the app service.

Under the new initiative the commuters travelling in any public service cabs in case of emergency will have access to the 'Emergency Button' in the related Cab Services App.

If the commuter is in distress, he or she can press the Emergency Button in the App, the message will be transmitted to Hawk Eye App of the police through a backend operational workflow.

This will further enable passing on 'Latitude: Longitude' location and other details of the passenger cab, driver and his mobile number to the police resources attending the emergency services like Police Control Room, nearby located Patrol Mobile, jurisdictional concerned SHO, Divisional ACP and Zonal DCP in addition to the Control Room of Cab Operators, registered family members, friends and other well-wishers.

Once the information is received, the police will respond immediately to reach the commuter in distress by continuously tracking the movement of the vehicle on the geotagged map.

The facility will not only help in apprehending the offender before the crime is committed but also help in enhancing the levels of safety and security to all the commuters on the move and their family members at home.

DGP said a dedicated team at Command Control Centre round-the-clock will work to monitor and document the complaint. After completion of the task, a third-party call centre team will call the complainants and take feedback from them and make the documentation on citizen satisfaction and evaluate the performance of the officials.

The process of integrating Police Patrols with passenger cabs has been achieved for the Cab Services provided by 'OLA, Tora, Pryde, Move in Sync, 112 (Shout App developed by MHA), and App developed by Telangana Tourism.

DGP requested all the other providers of Cab Services, Public Service Vehicles to get their Mobile App integrated with Police Patrols for enhancing better safety and security to the commuters.