The Ministry of Interior’s Child Protection Center launched the “Hemayati” Mobile Application to improve the safety and protection services available for children. This application comes as a response to directions set by the Higher Leadership. It allows parents to know the whereabouts of their children, and determine times of arrival and departure of children to and from school, and informs them of any delays. Moreover, it enables parents to have live time communicate with their children through the application at all hours. It also provides an ingenious SOS feature built-in, enabling children to send distress calls to their parents when they feel threatened.
The free smartphone application is exclusively available in the UAE and is activated by parents only. It helps parents to locate children when they are lost. It is worth mentioning that this application is the culmination of the Ministry of Interior’s initiative, which recently launched 169 electronic services via its website and 30 smart services via mobile phones.
Major General Nasser Lakhrebani Al Nuaimi, Secretary General of the Office of HH Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior and Chairman of the Higher Committee for Child Protection at the Ministry of Interior, stressed that the “Hemayati” Program is a crucial part of the UAE’s “national agenda” for the next seven years. “It deals with security issues and works toward the aim of making the UAE one of the safest places in the world by achieving a complete sense of security, and by reducing the response period for emergency calls to just four minutes,” continued Major General Al Nuaimi. He also pointed out that the “Hemayati” System comes as a response to the requests of the parents wishing to know the whereabouts of their children.
“This application is part of the ministry’s initiatives, to provide care and attention to young people, and improve their protection and safety extensively,” said Al Nuaimi. Al Nuami also highlighted the ministry's procedures in this regard, most notably establishing the Ministry of Interior’s Child Protection Center in the UAE, which was set up as a result of the Ministerial Decree No. 347 of 2011.
He noted that the Ministry Interior’s Child Protection Center has been assigned with the mission of developing, implementing and standardizing the initiatives and actions aimed at providing safety, security and protection of all children living in or visiting the U.A.E.
“This project shall provide the highest standards of protection and security for children, by controlling their leisure time. This calls for strengthening efforts and institutional initiatives to protect them, given that youth and children populations represent a high percentage of society in the UAE,” Al Nuaimi concluded.
For his part, Major General Ahmed Nasser Al Raisi, Director General of Central Operations at Abu Dhabi Police, praised the application. “It provides a safety net to enhance child protection and allows parents to keep track of their children’s whereabouts or know that they didn’t reach school or any other public destination on time. It also allows family members to communicate via instant messaging that is accessible for family members only,” said Al Raisi. He also mentioned that the application features secure specifications due to its privacy policy, and helps to determine the whereabouts of children when they go missing. It also warns parents if their children failed to reach school on time, or any other places. “These projects are in service of the homeland,” said Al Raisi.
Commenting on the same subject, Brigadier Eng. Hussein Ahmed Al Harit