The National Police Service is set to roll out a mobile application app to help women facing danger. The app will allow women who find themselves in precarious situations to click, live stream, chat or shake their phones to raise an alarm to the nearest police station. Officers at the station will then be able to pinpoint the exact scene where the signals are picked from before dispatching help.
The initiative is as a result of efforts between NPS, Crown Trust, UN Women with plans to bring Safaricom onboard.
According to the head of Election Security Secretariat at the National Police Service, Dominic Kitavi, the app is configured in a way that once activated, it will send swift signals to the county police command centres and headquarters. Users without smartphones will be able to access the service using a USSD code.
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“The police stations will have a dashboard where they will receive alerts and send the officers on duty to respond to distress calls by women who are under attack,” said Mr Kisavi.
Police based at the headquarters will also be able to tell whether the officers at the county levels are acting on the alerts or ignoring them.
Speaking during a session on the role of police in election security and talks bordering on police accountability, sexual and gender-based violence and journalists’ safety, Kisavi also pointed out that political nomination-related offences reported to the authorities had dropped from 1,450 in 2017 to 114 between February and April this year.
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