More than 82,000 rickshaws, ride-hailing cabs, and public transport vehicles in Lahore have now been fitted with quick response (QR) panic buttons, and over 22,000 men and women have scanned the codes so far. City Traffic Officer (CTO) Lahore Syed Abdul Rahim Shirazi said installing the button has been made mandatory to ensure citizen safety and bring public transport within the legal framework, adding that women facing harassment can scan the code to contact authorities and get immediate assistance. Traffic teams are affixing the buttons at 45 locations across the city, with teams deployed in every traffic sector and 12 teams assigned exclusively to rickshaws, and four new licensing centres have been opened at the request of rickshaw unions.
The system is a joint initiative of City Traffic Police Lahore and the Punjab Safe Cities Authority (PSCA), which launched the CM Punjab QR Panic Button System under the Digital Punjab Vision of Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif. The campaign was inaugurated on June 10 at Liberty Chowk, where the CTO personally fitted the first buttons in more than 100 rickshaws. Vehicle owners and drivers can obtain a button free of cost through the Public Safety App or the PSCA website, and the authority says the platform combines 12 safety features. The buttons are linked to the PSCA central control room, and an alert is sent to the Virtual Women Police Station to prompt a rapid police response. Drivers can use the same code to seek help in cases of robbery, disputes, or other threatening situations while on duty.
The rollout has moved quickly but is now levelling off. Authorities reported more than 40,000 buttons installed by August 17 and around 80,000 by September 28, so the count has risen by only a couple of thousand in the past two weeks, which suggests coverage of Lahore’s registered public transport fleet is nearing completion. The figure of 22,000 scans is also worth reading carefully. A scan is not the same as an emergency alert, and officials did not say how many scans were genuine calls for help, how many were tests or accidental, or how quickly police responded. Those numbers will matter more than installation totals in judging whether the system actually protects passengers.
Enforcement is a second thread in the announcement. Shirazi said a final decision has been made to take action against online cab services that fail to adopt the required safety and security features, and that installing advanced tracking systems in ride-hailing services has already made monitoring of passengers and drivers more effective. He described the use of modern technology as a way of giving citizens safe, reliable, and quality travel, and said technology-based measures are improving traffic discipline and public safety. The scheme sits alongside other PSCA safety measures in Lahore, including panic buttons installed in women’s colleges and universities. The next test is whether the rules reach every ride-hailing operator in the city, and whether Punjab extends the same mandatory model to other cities and publishes response data to show it is working.
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