New App Wants To Send Your Road Complaint Directly To Authorities

As Malaysians, we have a bottomless pit of complaints, grievances, and opinions of dissatisfaction for those in power and responsible for the governing bodies in the country. But we’re usually left to shout our criticisms (usually with scathing language) into the wind, or on social media - same thing. Now there’s an app for that.

It’s called RepotLah and besides this writer not knowing the word ‘report’ had made its way into common slang, the developers have actually seemed to have put some good choices in how their app functions.

These include the reporting of potholes, broken street lights, malfunctioning traffic lights, and the uploading of traffic offences captured on photo or dashcam video via the app, which is available for download now on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

As time goes on, Repotlah Tech Sdn Bhd, the team behind the app, have said they will be adding support for users to submit their complaints on matters besides those encountered on the road, possibly even expanding to emergency related matters. In the shorter term, complaints on double parking, noise pollution, rubbish, and smoking at restaurants will be added in the coming weeks.

That being said, submissions of these complaints will first be filtered for authenticity and accuracy by the RepotLah team before being forwarded to the relevant authorities. The status of a user’s complaint report can be monitored via the in-app My Activity tab and they can even be notified if progress was made.

According to RepotLah’s Privacy Policy, only a limited amount of relevant information will be sent to the authorities to act on the complaint should there be a need to confirm the matter. However, there will also be an anonymous option to further guard a user’s privacy.

For now, since its early days, RepotLah co-founder Keasavan Hari Krishnan confirmed that the app is currently undergoing testing in the Kinrara and Subang area of the Klang Valley with more locations due to be added soon.

Several lawmakers and members of parliament have also voiced their support for RepotLah, including Kapar MP Abdullah Sani Abdul Hamid, Kota Damansara MP Shatiri Mansor, Lembah Pantai MP Fahmi Fadzil, Permatang Pauh MP Nurul Izzah Anwar, Subang MP Wong Chen and Selangor executive councillor Izham Hashim.

The app interface looks to be cleanly designed with a focus on community interaction, allowing users to like, comment, and share the complaints submitted by others.

Given how many incidences of double parkers, triple parkers, red light runners, potholes, and broken traffic lights the average urban-dwelling Malaysian encounters on a daily basis, it’s easy to imagine the RepotLah team quickly becoming overwhelmed at the sheer volume of complaints, especially since they have seemingly confirmed that each submission will be verified by a human (not just a bot).