The figure emerged on Friday, 23 October, as a parliamentary inquiry examined NidaaOne, a phone service introduced to route public complaints to government departments. Its software marked 1.86 million of 13.2 million calls as repetitive or disruptive between January 2025 and September this year. A review found that 214,603 were valid, first-time complaints that should have reached officials.
The panel said it was the largest number of legitimate calls wrongly excluded by an automated public-service system yet disclosed in Pakistan. Some callers had made several attempts before their complaints were recorded; the inquiry heard that 58,400 misclassified reports concerned interrupted water or electricity service. The panel has not said how many cases were eventually resolved.
The filter’s false positives
“People called for help and the system treated them as noise,” said Emilia Samaniego, who chairs the inquiry. She said the false rejections were spread across four provinces and included reports about pension payments and school transport as well as household services. “We need to know why a tool designed to shorten queues was allowed to close them.”
Duje Ratković, technical director of the software contractor, Cedar Signal Systems, told the hearing the filter was designed to identify abusive or duplicate calls. It relied on call length, repeated phrases and automated speech transcripts, he said. Ratković accepted that the system sometimes confused callers repeating details because they had been cut off with callers making duplicate complaints.
Who was left unheard
Kyle Y. Moloi, a Lahore-based telecom researcher called by the panel, said the error count showed that the system’s targets had rewarded speed over accuracy. “A fast answer is not a service if the complaint never reaches a person,” he said. He urged officials to publish monthly figures for rejected calls and to give callers a simple way to request human review.
Bergfinn Hammer, a pension recipient from Rawalpindi who testified by video link, said he had called three times about a delayed payment before a local office confirmed his case was missing from its queue. He said he received the money later, but had not been told the helpline had labelled his earlier calls as duplicates. The inquiry has not independently verified his account.
The federal programme paid Rs4.8 billion (about €15 million) to launch and operate NidaaOne, according to figures entered at the hearing. The panel said it would examine the contract’s performance measures, including a target to handle 90% of calls without human review. Cedar Signal Systems has not said whether it will refund any of the fees.
The inquiry ordered the service to suspend automatic rejection of complaints while a manual review is carried out. Officials are due back before the panel on 12 November with a count of restored cases and a plan for checking callers’ files. The chair said the system could resume automated screening only after the panel sees evidence that valid complaints are reaching the departments responsible for them.
