SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

The Po­lice Ser­vice mo­bile app has now been ze­ro-rat­ed by Dig­i­cel which means Dig­i­cel cus­tomers can use the app with­out da­ta, cred­it or a wire­less con­nec­tion.

This will al­low cus­tomers to re­port a crime or re­quest emer­gency as­sis­tance through the app for free.

The an­nounce­ment was made at a TTPS press con­fer­ence at the TTPS’ Ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing in Port of Spain yes­ter­day.

Dig­i­cel’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Abra­ham Smith, said the com­pa­ny is proud to part­ner with the po­lice ser­vice to give women an ad­di­tion­al tool that can save their life in emer­gency sit­u­a­tions.

There are mul­ti­ple apps that can send emer­gency mes­sages but all re­quire ei­ther a da­ta plan or a wire­less in­ter­net con­nec­tion. Be­fore now, with­out ei­ther one, emer­gency re­ports would be im­pos­si­ble, leav­ing peo­ple with­out ac­cess to da­ta or wifi at a greater risk.

Smith said al­though the app was ze­ro-rat­ed, it re­quired the user to have their lo­ca­tion fea­ture switched on.

“It’s been heart­break­ing that we have be­come all too fa­mil­iar with head­lines and news sto­ries that clear­ly in­di­cate that we need to do more.

“Women are un­der threat and are be­ing at­tacked, we must adopt a mul­ti-faceted ap­proach to work to­geth­er to teach equal­i­ty in our homes and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions and hold men ac­count­able for their be­hav­iour and em­pow­er and equip women with tools to keep them safe as an added pre­cau­tion,” Smith said.

He boast­ed that 58 per cent of Dig­i­cel’s work­force was fe­male, with over half of its lo­cal lead­er­ship team be­ing women.

He said in a com­pa­ny pow­ered by women, Dig­i­cel felt it was im­por­tant to part­ner with the Po­lice Ser­vice.

Smith said the TTPS mo­bile app was now ze­ro-rat­ed for all Dig­i­cel cus­tomers.

“This means that even if you do not have an ac­tive plan or bun­dle or if you do not have cred­it on your phone, that you will still be able to use the app and its safe­ty fea­tures. Of par­tic­u­lar im­por­tance is there SOS fea­ture as it was just de­scribed, which us­es GPS tech­nol­o­gy and the LTE net­work to send your live lo­ca­tion to po­lice and your pre-se­lect­ed emer­gency con­tacts if you are in an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion and you need as­sis­tance,” Smith said.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith thanked Dig­i­cel for their work in en­sur­ing women are safer in T&T.

Head of the Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit, Su­per­in­ten­dent Claire Guy-Al­leyne in her re­marks said women have con­tin­ued to break the glass ceil­ing in T&T.

She said there are mul­ti­ple women in lead­er­ship po­si­tions in the po­lice ser­vice.

Guy-Al­leyne is­sued call for more busi­ness­es to come for­ward to as­sist the TTPS in mak­ing the coun­try safer for vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple.

She al­so sent out a call to cit­i­zens say­ing, “I choose to chal­lenge every cit­i­zen in T&T, I want the Trinidad and To­ba­go, and by ex­ten­sion, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice- to be a coun­try where gen­der-based vi­o­lence, at­tacks on women, chil­dren and even men can be down to ze­ro. I want to chal­lenge every cit­i­zen, let us car­ry that num­ber to ze­ro.”