Car broken down? Try this app, that's an Uber for recovery trucks

Energy Wednesday 18/October/2017 10:35 AM
By: Times News Service
Car broken down? Try this app, that's an Uber for recovery trucks

Muscat: In an attempt to help those who struggle on the road looking for recovery trucks to move their broken down vehicles from one place to another, an Omani citizen has developed an online mobile application that provides mobile phones of recovery trucks drivers from across the Sultanate.
A downloadable app called Rafaa — Arabic for recovery — lists mobile phones of recovery truck drivers near any broken down vehicle. The recovery driver can be summoned to the spot via GPS within minutes of a breakdown — a valuable safety tool in some of Oman's less populated areas.
The application has been prepared and designed by Eng. Abdulrahim Abdullah Noori Al Balushi, Head of IT Department at Al Jarwani Hospitality, in cooperation with a number of developers, and was launched this week.
"It is available online at the moment because I am adding new mobile phones, but I am planning to make it operational offline very soon," Eng. Abdulrahim said.
As a first step, the developer has collected a number of mobile phones of a number of recovery truck drivers, yet he called upon everyone, especially owners and drivers of recovery trucks to register their mobile phones and interact with the app.
Once a recovery truck driver clicks on the 'Register' button on the app, Eng. Abdulrahim receives a message or an email with the request from the sender and then he calls the sender to verify that the sender is a true recovery truck driver or owner.
Eng. Abdulrahim told Times of Oman that he received plenty of requests during the first two days of the launch of the app, and he is adding them to the app. "I add the mobile phones to the app personally to ensure its credibility and security," he said.
According to one of the recovery truck drivers, it costs OMR35 to transport a broken saloon vehicle from Sohar to Al-Buraimi, which is a distance of nearly 100km.
Haitham Abdulhakim Al Balushi, another recovery truck driver said, "The application is really amazing and useful for a lot of people."
Eng. Abdulrahim told Times of Oman that he had this idea nearly one year ago.
"The application has been purely designed as a non-profit application and it is only meant to help connect the public with recovery truck owners and drivers from around the Sultanate fast and easily," the developer said.
Besides the mobile phones of recovery truck drivers, the application also contains some hotlines of useful important emergency numbers such as, ROP operations, Muscat Municipality Emergency, Tourist Information, Royal Hospital, Muscat Coast Guard Police and Muscat International Airport Queries.