Lahoreculture & etiquette

From roughly November to January, air quality in Lahore reaches levels that repeatedly put it at or near the top of global pollution rankings, with readings above 1,000 on the index recorded in recent winters. The Punjab government's response has included closing schools across multiple divisions, mandating work from home, and restricting access to parks. Plan for it concretely: high-quality air purifiers in bedrooms and the room you work in, well-fitted masks, and a household understanding that outdoor exercise stops for those weeks. Anyone with asthma, a young child or an elderly parent should factor this into the decision to move here at all.

The Punjab Rented Premises Act 2009 requires tenancy agreements to be registered and creates dedicated Rent Tribunals presided over by special judges, with real execution powers. Sindh, by contrast, still runs on a 1979 ordinance and ordinary civil courts. This is one of the few places where a provincial difference in Pakistan produces a materially better outcome for a tenant — but the protection follows registration. An unregistered agreement puts you back in the slow lane, and landlords do not always volunteer to register.

NADRA's Pakistan Origin Card gives foreign nationals of Pakistani descent — including foreign spouses — indefinite stay, exemption from police and foreigners' registration reporting, the right to buy and hold property anywhere in Pakistan, banking rights and eligibility for employment. A POC holder needs no work visa. NICOP is the different document, for people who are Pakistani citizens, and it supports a Pakistani passport and voter registration. Lahore has deeper Pakistani-diaspora ties than any other city in the country and a very large share of people relocating here qualify for one or the other without knowing it.

The FBR's Active Taxpayers List is the operative document in Pakistani financial life. Non-filers pay materially higher withholding on property purchases, vehicle registration, dividends and certain banking transactions. Obtaining a National Tax Number does not put you on the list; filing a return by the due date does, and a late filer is admitted only after paying a surcharge. The list rebuilds weekly, so status lapses. On a car or a property purchase the difference is large enough to fund a year's air purifiers.

Rents, food and services all run below the other two cities, and the gap on rent in particular is substantial once you move away from DHA and Gulberg. Salaries in the technology sector are competitive with Karachi's, and Lahore has the country's deepest engineering talent pool around the Arfa Software Technology Park and the older universities. What you give up is Karachi's international corporate density and Islamabad's air and calm.

The Punjab Emergency Service was established under the Punjab Emergency Service Act 2006 and runs ambulance, fire and rescue on a single number across all 36 districts of Punjab, with a published average response time under eight minutes. It is genuinely one of the better-run public services in South Asia. Other provinces have replicated it with varying scope — Sindh's version is newer and Islamabad's is run by the municipal corporation — so 1122 does not mean exactly the same thing everywhere. In Lahore it means the full service.