Step forward: Police now a click away

Lahore Police to start text-based complaint management system next week

LAHORE: Lahore Police will launch a text-based complaint management system next week allowing citizens to lodge complaints by sending an SMS to 8330, Operations SSP Muhammad Baqir Raza told The Express Tribune on Saturday.

IGP Mushtaq Ahmad Sukehra will inaugurate the service at a ceremony to be arranged at the DIG office. Police have been running the pilot project internally for three months.

“The department will track applicants’ complaints and an SMS response will be sent within a week,” Raza said. The initiative would help ensure that citizens’ grievances are quickly addressed, he said.

“The new service will provide citizens better access to police. The force will now be only a text message away,” the SSP said.

“The initiative has been taken to provide citizens with an opportunity to register complaints in a free-of-fear environment,” Raza said. He said the project was the latest in a series of initiatives taken by the force to win public’s confidence.

Operations DIG Haider Ashraf said he would personally monitor the operation of the system. The DIG said police would make sure that complaints received through 8330 were quickly processed.

He said complaints related to property would be processed with 24 hours, those related to money and land grab in seven days and crime-against-person (except murders) in three days.

Ashraf said officials would inform complainants about registration of FIRs and action taken thereafter.

Commenting on the service, Zunair Ali, a student, said he hoped that the initiative would prove a step forward. “It’s a good step… sometimes people don’t even have sufficient balance to make phone calls. With this service they can still approach police,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 10^th, 2015.