SAHIWAL: Around 20 telephone booths have been set up in the Central Jail Sahiwal to allow prisoners to talk to their families and lawyers under surveillance.

Punjab Prisons Inspector General Main Farooq Nazir inaugurated the service on Sunday.

The service has been introduced to facilitate the inmates across Punjab but it is available in some jails yet. Each inmate will get 20 minutes a week to make a call at any given number.

“There will be no call charges as a telephone operator will dial the number for inmates. The system operator will record the call and its duration. The inmate will be connected to only those five PTCL or mobile phone numbers which he provides to jail administration for the record,” Rana Sohail, a jail official, told Dawn.

Jail Superintendent Gulzar Butt said the operator would keep the record of all the calls and monitor them to ensure that the facility was not misused. He said call schedule would be installed in each barrack and prison cell and each inmate would get his regular turn for the call accordingly.

A UAE-based multinational cellular company has installed 20-line infrastructure in the jail.

District Coordination Officer Asif Iqbal and PML-N MPAs Malik Arshad and Khizer Hayyat Khagga were present on the occasion of inauguration.

FOUR DIE: Four of a family died in a road accident near Chak 109/EB on the Burewala-Arifwala road.

Haji Abdul Manan along with his wife Gul Bibi, mother Aliya Bibi and six-year-old nephew Qamar were going on motorcycle when it had a collision with a truck coming from the opposite direction. Manan and his mother died on the spot while Qamar and Gul Bibi succumbed to their injuries at the Tehsil Headquarters Hospital Arifwala.

Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2015

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