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SA's 'Uber for police' hits 100 000

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 20 Nov 2017
The Namola app.
The Namola app.

Safety and security app Namola, South Africa's 'Uber for police', now has 100 000 users across the country.

The app is an advancement of the StellieSafe application and was designed by Happimo, a non-profit organisation, to be inclusive and accessible to anybody with a GPS-enabled smartphone.

First launched in 2015 in Tshwane, Namola is a free crime response app that allows users to share their GPS coordinates, name and nature of the emergency with a 24/7 response call centre. For genuine alerts, police, other emergency responses and citizen responders are dispatched and monitored.

It was originally only available in Gauteng but launched nationally earlier this month with support from Dialdirect Insurance. Since then, it has been downloaded by over 16 000 South Africans, bringing the total number of users to 100 000.

Warwick Scott-Rodger, executive head of Dialdirect, says the app addresses a critical issue that affects all South Africans: the slow response time of emergency services.

Police minister Fikile Mbalula says: "We continue to emphasise that crime-fighting requires civil society to work together with police. Modern technology empowers our people to protect themselves and access information and help. I congratulate the team for their launch, and I am motivated by their continued activism in the fight against crime."

Namola also recently launched 'Namola Watch' for community policing forums. The company says: "Many communities have created structures to make their areas safe and to support local law enforcement, which is sometimes stretched thin."

It says Namola Watch will alert verified participating community policing forums, neighbourhood watches and farm watches of incidents in their area. The groups will then be able to further assist users requesting emergency assistance through the Namola app.

Councillor Fawzia Peer, deputy mayor of Ethekweni Municipality, says it is important to use technology to fight crime. "I encourage all ratepayers to download Namola. We will strive to also respond to emergencies with speed."

Namola can be downloaded free from either the Google Play Store or Apple App Store.

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