Chennai city's women police along with Fever 91.9 FM have kickstarted a month long campaign to spread awareness on women's safety across the city. Titled 'Singapenney - It is our time to roar' the campaign aims to popularise and increase the downloads and use of Tamil Nadu police's Kavalan SOS app among Chennai's people.
"TN police is among the first in India to launch an SOS app that helps people seek police assistance in cases of all kinds of emergencies - physical emergency, harassment, abduction, or natural calamities. Our month long campaign is to get more people, especially women, to use the app and seek the help of the police in case of an emergency. We will go to malls, schools, IT companies etc to popularise the app," Ajai Titus, the programming manager of Fever FM tells TNM.
The campaign was launched on December 10 with the joint collaboration of police inspectors from the 35 All Women's police stations in the city. Events were held in VR Mall, Pondy Bazaar's new pedestrian plaza and the JBAS college for women. During the launch, these women police officers had a Q and A session with the public on women safety, use of Kavalan through a demo and access to AMMA patrol - the pink patrolling vehicles operated by women officers.
"During a demonstration in a college in Chennai, most students out of a 1000 odd crowd did not raise their hands when asked if they had dialled 100 in case of an emergency. Shockingly, when they were asked if they would be likely to seek cop assistance in the future the students still did not raise their hands. This exposes the popularly held public perception that cops are not friendly. With our campaign, we aim to change this by bringing the cops and the public closer together, so that more people call the police when they are faced with any kind of danger," Ajai added.
During the launch of the campaign, the officers also shared their numbers with the public to increase accessibility. and encourage women to approach area specific stations for any issues.
A brainchild of Fever FM's RJ Sano, the Singappenney campaign will continue on to January 2020 with on-air and on-ground awareness programmes highlighting the safety initiatives of women by the Tamil Nadu police.
As part of the campaign, the organisers have also got in touch with the Greater Chennai Corporation to turn the Chennai's conic Ripon Building pink for a few hours as a reminder to make the city safer for women.