CRIME LINE is no more.
“The project has been terminated,” said Kobus Miller, former manager of the department within Trustco Namibia’s headquarters in Windhoek. He said Trustco terminated the toll-free crime report telephone service last week due to poor response from members of the public, whom the service was intended to protect.Miller said the public didn’t seem to be interested in the initiative.Neither did Trustco enjoy any great support from the local corporate community.Trustco Group International launched Crime Line on February 24.Since then the Crime Line service received as little as two to three calls a month, he said.The confidentiality of the informants was guaranteed through a state-of-the-art computer system.Legal Shield, a subsidiary of Trustco, was to contribute up to N$1 million to the project.Yesterday Miller said that public did not seem to see a need for such a service, and as far as Trustco was concerned, the “response does not justify the cost”.Although there were concerns raised earlier on about the way Crime Line would work together with the Namibian Police, Miller pointed out that this in no way contributed to the demise of the service.He said that even before Crime Line was initiated, the two parties had signed a memorandum of understanding on how the information collected through the crime reporting service would be handled.He said Trustco terminated the toll-free crime report telephone service last week due to poor response from members of the public, whom the service was intended to protect.Miller said the public didn’t seem to be interested in the initiative.Neither did Trustco enjoy any great support from the local corporate community.Trustco Group International launched Crime Line on February 24.Since then the Crime Line service received as little as two to three calls a month, he said.The confidentiality of the informants was guaranteed through a state-of-the-art computer system.Legal Shield, a subsidiary of Trustco, was to contribute up to N$1 million to the project.Yesterday Miller said that public did not seem to see a need for such a service, and as far as Trustco was concerned, the “response does not justify the cost”.Although there were concerns raised earlier on about the way Crime Line would work together with the Namibian Police, Miller pointed out that this in no way contributed to the demise of the service.He said that even before Crime Line was initiated, the two parties had signed a memorandum of understanding on how the information collected through the crime reporting service would be handled.
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