Facilitating mobility: Mobile app for reporting harassment soon

Decision taken in view of fears about surge in harassment in public places

LAHORE: The Chief Minister’s Special Monitoring Unit is working on the development of a smartphone application to help women commuters and pedestrians report harassment incidents to the traffic police, The Express Tribune has learnt.

Work on the Anti-Harassment Smart Application is underway with assistance from the Punjab Information Technology Board. Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has already approved the project.

SMU senior member Salman Sufi told The Tribune the mobile application would allow women commuters facing harassment from another commuter to take photographs of the car or motorcycle driven by the harasser and send it to the central server. The server would forward the photo and information about the location of the complainant to a traffic warden in the vicinity, he said. The warden could then take action against the harassers, he added.

Sufi said the application would also prove useful for women traffic wardens assigned field duties.

Sufi said the decision to launch the application was taken to ensure an effective mechanism for action over harassment incidents in public places. He said concerns were raised in the media and by the civil society there could be a surge in such incidents in the wake of the launch of the Women on Wheels (WoW) campaign.

Under the WoW campaign, the Traffic Police has arranged free-of-cost training sessions for women. He said over 80 women had enrolled for the first training session to be held at the Traffic Police’s Thokar Driving School. He said the session had started already following a public information session held on November 19th. The trainees would participate in a motorcycle rally to be held in the city at the conclusion of the ongoing session, he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 25^th, 2015.