'Mera Pyara' reunites 200 kids daily
Evolving as a local alternative to the United States 'Amber Alert' system to trace missing kids, Punjab government's Mera Pyara initiative is reuniting at least 200 children per day with their families across the province, according to official data.
Since its launch on July 26 last year, the Punjab Safe Cities Authority (PSCA) has processed 100,000 cases involving lost, missing, abandoned and vulnerable children, of which 91,641 have been successfully resolved, said PSCA Chief Operating Officer Mustansir Feroz while talking to The Express Tribune.
The Virtual Centre for Child Safety, known as Mera Pyara, was launched last year by the chief minister of Punjab and has developed into one of the country's largest technology-supported child recovery mechanisms, he said.
Based on digital tools and institutional coordination, the programme aims to address a gap in response to missing children, the elderly and persons with disabilities.
According to PSCA's Emergency 15 helpline statistics, an average of 90 children go missing each day in Punjab, while 30 children are reported abandoned in streets, markets or other public spaces. Many such cases remained unresolved for months, and in some instances, for years.
Even after the Zainab murder case in Kasur, when legislation was passed to establish a dedicated authority, the mechanism could not be fully implemented.
The PSCA, initially established for surveillance, traffic management and emergency response, identified this gap and began building a province-wide digital platform for child safety.
Under the new model, citizens can report a lost or found child by calling 15 and pressing option 3, through a dedicated number 0309-0000015, the PSCA Public Safety App, the Mera Pyara Facebook page, or via the website merapyara.pk.
The authority's central call centre, which fields up to 100,000 calls per day, serves as the primary data hub for all reports about lost and found children in the province.
Once a report is received, the platform uses a combination of facial recognition, whereabouts matching, integrated police databases and citizen-submitted information to trace the child. Field teams carry out interviews, conduct verification visits, and, where necessary, use targeted social media outreach to identify families. The authority says social platforms - particularly Facebook and TikTok - have become critical tools in crowd-assisted identification.
The COO also said teams regularly visit welfare institutions such as Edhi centres, Child Protection Bureaus, shelter homes and orphanages to collect data on unidentified children. The digital system is linked with 737 police stations across Punjab, ensuring immediate registration of criminal cases where abduction, abuse or exploitation is suspected. To date, 18,274 FIRs have been registered in connection with cases handled through the initiative.
During its first year of operation, the programme received over 36,000 cases of lost children, with more than 35,000 reunifications reported.
The official added that work was under way to expand the service beyond Punjab.
PSCA teams have contacted 190 shelter homes across Pakistan, gathering data of more than 1,800 unidentified children and special persons. In the past three months, families of over 800 such individuals were traced.
In a recent case in Shahdara, an 11-year-old girl, Irum, was reunited with her parents five years after she had gone missing. She had been living at the Child Protection Bureau. Authorities recorded her video for identification, which was later recognised by an elderly resident of Firdous Market.