More than 130,000 members on MyDistress
More than 130,000 members on MyDistress
By Aida Ahmad
aidaahmad@thestar.com.my
SINCE the MyDistress smartphone application was introduced last year, there are currently 131,362 registered members in Selangor to date.
The amount of distress calls that have been made since then are 178 by the users.
Eighty-eight of that consist of crime cases while five have been traffic accident cases.
Crime National Key Results Area’s (NKRA) officer-in-charge Deputy Supt Mohamed Mokhsein Mohamed Zon said they had managed to apprehend two culprits red-handed in a robbery case.
“There was a case in Serdang last month involving a man who was trying to break in a house and the neighbour used the MyDistress application.
“We managed to catch the guy. This proves that MyDistress is useful for the policemen to respond faster when incidences occur,” he said.
He added that when calls are made to Rakan Cop or 999, more time is consumed by asking and answering questions.
“MyDistress eliminates all of this,” he said.
The system was an initiative by the police in its efforts to increase the participation of the public to prevent crime in line with the Government Transformation Programme’s (GTP) NKRA.
Depending on the case and traffic, the fastest time response time to a case is three minutes.
He gave an example of an armed robbery case in Sungai Way where a lady was robbed by four men armed with machetes.
“A patrol car arrived at the scene in four minutes after the victim used MyDistress.
“The incident occurred by the side of the road and the lady escaped without injuries,” he said.
There are 15 police operations rooms (Bilik Gerakan) in Selangor (one in each district and one in the Selangor Police Contingent headquarters) and the public can also call the Selangor police hotline numbers.
Each operation centre has one police inspector in charge by shift to handle the 999 calls.
The MyDistress application is a pilot project and currently only useable in Selangor.
It can be downloaded from https://mydistress.net and is available on the Blackberry, iOS, Android and Java phones.
(Source: http://thestar.com.my/metro/story.asp?file=/2012/10/23/central/12181448&sec=central)