KARACHI: The Sindh police have decided to install 4,000 high definition 12 megapixel closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras across Karachi in a major move to replace and augment the existing 2,200 cameras, which have become so obsolete that their footage provides little help in identifying suspects or even registration number of vehicles used in a crime.

The decision was taken after investigators learnt the bitter fact time and again that the footage of different crime incidents recorded by the police cameras helped them understand the way a crime was committed, but gave almost no help in identifying the suspects.

In many cases the National Database Registration Authority (Nadra) has turned down requests to identify suspects when police sent it footage or pictures grabbed from the police cameras.

“At present, the Karachi police control around 2,200 CCTV cameras. Of them, 1,200 are owned by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) and the remaining 1,000 by the Sindh police.

“They all are two-megapixel devices, which are good for monitoring purposes only but they do not record a clear enough picture that can be easily identified,” said an official.

The facts shared by the official were also intimated to the Senate Committee on Human Rights by Sindh police DIG (admin) Sarwar Jamali, who recently informed members of parliament that some 50 per cent of the 2,200 two-megapixel CCTV cameras in Karachi were not functioning.

The senate body was also told that the cameras that were functioning were of such poor quality that their footage did not help even in reading registration numbers of vehicle.

The Sindh police required more than 10,000 cameras of at least eight megapixels for effective policing and surveillance, he said.

“We’ve chalked out a comprehensive plan to replace the existing cameras and spot 2,000 new locations to install more cameras,” said AIG security Maqsood Ahmed, who was tasked with management and operation of the Karachi police surveillance system.

“This time we are going for 12 megapixel cameras and the project will be initiated in the next fiscal year starting from July 2016. The technology of the existing cameras has almost become obsolete and it’s high time we replaced them with the latest available.”

Besides police’s own surveillance system set up the command and control centre at the CPO, the police authorities have also been supervising the KMC’s system at Civic Centre since September 2013.

Envisaged by former city nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal, the then city government had formally launched its command and control system in June 2008, which initially allowed surveillance of two signal-free corridors — Sharea Faisal to SITE and Surjani Town.

The Sindh police had launched ‘video surveillance system’ for Karachi in 2010 with an initial estimated cost of Rs500 million and currently it operates 1,000 CCTV cameras across the city.

DIG Ahmed said that at the time the Sindh police and the KMC had launched their surveillance projects, they had chosen the best available technology for their systems.

“But over the years, the technology has advanced at a much faster pace and choice of equipment availability has increased manifold,” he said.

“It’s high time we enhanced technological support for effective policing on the pattern of many developed cities of the world. The plan to replace the two megapixel cameras with 12 megapixel ones and increase the number of locations is a step in the same direction.”

Published in Dawn, May 10th, 2016