Centralised '15' police helpline being established at CPO

In an attempt to effectively fight crime and respond to distress calls, the establishment of a centralised 15 police helpline is in progress at the Central Police Office, Sindh.
The project, initiated by the provincial home department in collaboration with information technology (IT) department, would help curb growing trend of criminal activities and ensure timely action to protect precious life and property of citizens, sources in the IT Department told Business Recorder on Thursday.
Commenting on the current system, they said that the police helpline '15' was a decentralised system causing serious miseries for people, besides restricting timely reaching of police party on the spot. The new system, however, has been designed to do away with this problem and ensure prompt response to the citizens' complaints, they said. "If a citizen approaches the helpline from somewhere in Bahadurabad, his call would get connected to the 15 center in Nazimabad, from where it would be redirected to the relevant zonal 15, wasting precious time and causing inordinate delay in responding to a distress call," they said.
In the centralised system, they said the operator after receiving a distress call would locate the position of the nearby mobile vans and direct it to attend to the complaint, thus saving a considerable amount of time.
A police mobile takes at least 15 to 30 minutes to reach the crime scene, they said and added that the 15 centers had almost become redundant and turned into the chat rooms.
At the centralised call center, such non-serious calls would be strictly monitored and any operator found indulging in unnecessary conversations would be immediately identified and action would be taken against him.
The sources said each police mobile van would be equipped with a chip/tracker system, which would help locate its current position through a digital city map like Google Earth, to be installed at the centralised call center at the CPO. They said the entire system would be based on Geographical Information System (GIS).
They said more than 100 employees would be trained for the call center, adding the renovation work of the building was underway in a fast pace and it would start functioning very shortly.