PM Imran launches Pakistan's first national emergency helpline 911

ISLAMABAD – Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday inaugurated Pakistan Emergency Helpline (PEHEL)-911 to facilitate the common people.

Addressing the inaugural ceremony in Islamabad, Khan said the emergency helpline is a great project that needs support of all the federating units of the country.

"It is a responsibility of the state and my vision is to make Pakistan a welfare state," he added.

Now a caller will only have to dial 911 and it will be routed to the emergency response department concerned.

All the 36 individual emergency numbers for the provision of emergency services like fire brigade, police, health assistance, disaster recovery and motorway police are integrated into the national emergency helpline.

This concept was derived from USA’s helpline 911 while the work to establish the national helpline formally began following the Lahore-Sialkot motorway rape incident in September last year.

The woman was gang-raped in front of her children in September last year, prompting Prime Minister Imran Khan to launch Pakistan’s first toll-free helpline number.

As a part of Digital Pakistan Initiative, the project is a joint venture of the Ministry of Information Technology & Telecommunication and the Ministry of Interior.