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Dubai to introduce new app to report food violations

The new mobile app will enable residents to report food related offences such as expired food item in a supermarket or spoilt food in a restaurant.

Dubai will soon introduce an app that will help residents report food safety violations on the spot to the civic officials from their mobile phones.

The new mobile app will enable residents to report food related offences such as expired food item in a supermarket or spoilt food in a restaurant in real time directly by taking pictures or videos and identifying the location on an interactive map. In October, the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority had launched a similar app.

Currently, residents in Dubai have to call the Dubai Municipality on its toll free number 800900 for reporting such offences. With the new app, reporting will go directly and immediately into the authority’s case management system.

As per the notification, the inspector in charge can reach the location in time, begin investigation and take further action.

The Director of the GIS Department Abdul Hakim Malik told Khaleej Times the app was developed with the private sector and departments in the municipality. The app, which will be available on all mobile platforms, has been developed by private firm GISTEC along with the municipality’s GIS Department and Food Control Department as part of the government’s smart city initiative.

GIS Specialist at the municipality Hussein M Abdulmuttalib, who is in charge of the project at the department, said the application shall be released to the public after fine-tuning.

Initially, he said, the information and pictures will be provided to the current existing systems, thus it will be same as those collected through a phone call, while the next step is to automate the job and integrate both systems automatically. — sajila@khaleejtimes.com