By Munyaradzi Dhure
An innovative application on travelling for the Zimbabwean travellers is on the cards, courtesy of Emergency Taxi as young scientists take on new modern trends to address transport challenges in Zimbabwe.
Emergency Taxi Chief Executive Officer Prince Pirikisi briefed the media on plans to officially launch an application system which offers an enabling facility to private car owners to re-drive their vehicles as emergency taxis by October 2018.
Prince’s brain child behind ET differs with other popular primitive ride sharing applications like Taxify, Uber and Lift in the sense that they have evolved from the mounted meter reader system to the digital system through mobile so as to relate with the modern world.
Briefing the media on 21 September 2018 at Joina City Cyrex Business Centre in Harare he said, “We are going to officially unleash our application in October this year for people to explore the good efficient riding system which enables any private car owner to manage their fleet as taxis for an extra earning”
Prince as a native of Zimbabwe who is based in South Africa is a mindful of the collective responsibility to sustainably improve the quality of life, opportunity and prosperity of the people of Southern Africa.
“So far Emergency Taxi is a ride-hailing service which is now available in five African countries namely South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia and Botswana. In the next month our goal is to carry ET to Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, Zambia and Malawi”, he stressed.
According to ET’s ethics, people should register through silver cab in Vainona for them to engage with this pick up and drop service.
Charges are assumably to range from eighty cents per kilometre in order for everyone to afford and any suspicious activity from the driver or passenger on board, ET has safety features which are fast in reaction.
“There is real time monitoring from the call centre. Thus when a passenger is calling for a ride, the moment they are picked up, traffic acts and on drop off points as well. Despite these, any bad suspected gesture from neither the driver nor the passenger the Emergency Taxi application has got three panic buttons to press and the authorities will take action instantly by tracing the route” he emphasised.
The application is available on Android, Google Play Store and for iOS. It is said to be available anytime before the official launch.
Prince appealed for stake holders like Econet, TelOne, NetOne and Telecel to compliment his application system in terms of data to be used to access this facility although provisions on the application to operate offline are certain.
Speaking to the publication after the Presser, one of the Harare City Council Public Relations employee Thelma Munyoro appreciated this new innovative facility for she believed it will tally with the Mayor’s 100 day mantra of decongesting cities.
“I believe that the informal mushika-shika drivers will comply with Emergency Taxi registration and hopefully we won’t notice any cabs roaming around causing congestion in the CBD” she said.