ZRP Brag About Social Media Presence, As They Plan To Go Digital

At a recent election reporting workshop in Gweru, police spokesperson Chief Superintendent Paul Nyathi said the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) has embarked on a digitisation drive that will see the computerisation of all its police stations.

Nyathi also pointed out the fact that the process begun a while ago but has been hindered by a lack of funds. It’s interesting that he pointed to the lack of funds when the police force (under the old government) had become famous for milking drivers of their cash.

Anyway, Nyathi did make it clear that the project will definitely not be completed by the time of the elections this year because of this funding issue.

One of the major aims of this computerisation is to have dockets stored digitally instead of having records on paper.

Sounds good, I guess…

Depending on how this is implemented this could improve the systems and increase efficiency. The computerisation will probably help ZRP in tracking statistics related to crime.

Another use case for a digital system is the fact that it will be easy to store crime dockets on a central server where they cannot be easily manipulated or misplaced.

It will be interesting to see how the technology is implemented once it is here.

For now: You can go to their social media pages…

“Despite the financial challenges that we are facing, we have come up with a Facebook page, Whatsapp platforms and Twitter accounts that the public can use as part of our ease of doing business”

This statement was made by the same man who had been talking about computerising. It’s funny he mentioned this as something they have done even though they are desperate for funding, as if Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp are expensive tools that are out of the reach of ordinary people.

ZRP Facebook pages are based on municipalities and when I checked the page for my municipality, the page had updates concerning meetings in the municipality, updates on their Help24Seven app and the occasional accident update in order to notify residents on which traffic routes to avoid.

Time will tell

The computerization will be a lengthy process because once ZRP has managed to acquire the technology they need, they will then have to train the police force on how to use the technology to its true potential.

This training will obviously require more funds to be invested before the system is fully operational and can be fully relied on. Police will also have to be fully trained on the Electoral Act and other election-related statutes.