Women and Child Development Minister welcomed the Prime Minister initiatives on the Women Safety
Department of Telecommunications (DoT) Initiatives:
Department of Telecommunications has issued the notification regarding “Panic Button and Global Positioning System in Mobile Phone Handsets Rules 2016”
About DoT
- Headquarters: New Delhi
- Minister of Communications and IT: Ravi Shankar Prasad
- Secretary:J S Deepak
Steps taken by the Ministry of Women and Child Development
- In June 2014, the ministry had taken the steps to install the physical panic button on mobile phone in order to provide safety to women in unsafely situation.
- It is provided to enable them to send out warning signal to a family member or the police authorities so that they can be saved.
- The Minister had discussion with stakeholders and DoT regarding the issues and insisted that a physical panic button is better than having Application on the mobile phone and it was explained that a woman in panic situation does not have enough time to send out a warning message in the event of a physical/sexual assault.
Department of Telecommunications and stakeholders agreed to have this facility installed in the mobile phones.
Notification issued by the DoT
Under Section 10 of the Indian Wireless Act, 1933
With effect from 01.01.2017 – All feature phones will have configuration of Panic buttons using 5 or 9 Buttons
All Smart phones will be configured to three times short pressing of the on-off button
With Effect from 01.01.2018 – All mobile phones will be provided to have the facility of recognizing the location through Satellite based Global Positioning system.
Aims:
- Providing security to millions of women who face panic situation
- Panic button will act as restrictions to assaulters
Current Progress:
The Ministry of Women and Child Development jointly works with the Department of Telecommunications and the stakeholders to ensure the solutions be made available for existing mobile phone handsets using software patches to send out emergency calls for concerned telephone numbers
