PESHAWAR: Since the launch of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police’s Android app on March 22, the law enforcement agency has received 164 public “complaints,” or calls, said Muhammad Imran, who helps to manage the app’s backend operations, on Saturday. Out of all those calls, he added, 127 were sent to the relevant police stations while 37 were still pending.
The app was launched to bridge the gap between police officials and the residents of the province. It’s available on the department’s website, and people can use it on their smartphones to report crimes and road accidents.
Superintendent Police (SP) Peshawar City Shahzada Kokab Farooq said the app had significantly improved the response time of his department.
“Depending upon the success of this app in Peshawar, we may also introduce it in other districts,” he added.
Farooq said: “It is much easier to manage 40 complaints that arrive through this app than handle 20 people who physically visit police stations with their grievances.”
The KP police have also set up a control room to deal with the public complaints arriving digitally. It consists of two big plasma screens, several computers, telephone lines and is managed by four staff members.
Imran, the control room operator, said that the app gave each complaint or report a unique ID.
“We copy the ID from one plasma screen and paste it in the search box of a map in the other. This highlights the area where the complaint or report has originated. It also reveals the contact number of the sender,” he added.
After this step, he said, the control room operators need to mark these complaints to the station house officer of the relevant police station, who directly receives the report.
Assistant Director at the Data Analysis Wing of the city’s police lines, Asfandyar Khan, told Arab News there were eight staff members managing the Android app. “Four of them receive public complaints in the control room,” he said. “The other four work in the data analysis section to monitor the process and get feedback from relevant police stations on the digitally received complaints.”
E-policing gradually takes off in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
E-policing gradually takes off in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
PIA denies social media claim its entire flight crew went missing abroad
- Airline says the allegation emerged from ‘anti-Pakistan quarters’ to defame both the national carrier
- Some social media posts recently said a PIA flight crew had gone missing during a layover in Toronto
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) on Sunday dismissed as “fake news” a social media claim that the entire crew of one of its flights had disappeared overseas, saying the post was circulated to defame both the national carrier and the country.
The statement came after social media posts said a PIA flight crew had gone missing during a layover in Toronto, Canada.
Previously, there have been reports that individual crew members have used layovers to remain abroad, often linked by analysts to economic conditions at home and perceived asylum opportunities under Canada’s immigration policies. However, PIA has adopted measures such as holding passports with station managers and assigning older crew to Canada routes to curb the trend.
“A tweet, circulated by certain anti-Pakistan quarters, claiming that the whole crew of a particular #PIA flight is missing, is entirely baseless,” the airline announced in a post on X, adding that the purpose of the message “seems to malign PIA and #Pakistan.”
“There has been no such incident, and the news is fake,” it said.
According to local media reports, the information had been circulated by an “Afghan and anti-Pakistan account.”
“The misleading tweet is part of a well-conceived plan based on hostility toward Pakistan and is aimed at damaging the reputation of the national airline and the country,” Pakistan’s English-language broadsheet, Dawn, quoted the airline spokesperson as saying.
Pakistan has been striving to privatize PIA along with other state-owned enterprises under an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan program.
The airline was banned from operating in Britain and Europe, though those restrictions have been removed more recently.
