TAXILA: The Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF) complexes in Wah, Havelian and Sanjwal will be converted into “safe cities”, the Senate Standing Committee on Defence Production was informed on Friday.

To do this, command and control systems will be esta­blished in these garrison cities and connected via CCTV cameras for public security and safety. A quick response force will be set up to respond to all sorts of emergencies in the complexes.

According to a POF press release, the project is expected to be completed next month.

The decision was made at a committee meeting chaired by its chairman, retired Lt Gen Abdul Qayyum. The secretary of defence production, retired Lt Gen Ijaz Chaudhry, Senator Hafiz Hamdullah, Nuzhat Sadiq, Gianchand, retired Brig John Kenneth Williams, Sehar Kamran and Atiq Shaikh were also present.

The POF chairman Lt Gen Umar Farooq Durrani briefed the committee about POF’s exports. He said that they had exported products to various countries around the globe valued at $31.16 million in 2016-17 while export orders of $36.57m were in hand. He added that the upper house POF products valued at Rs3,230m were provided to the country’s law enforcement agencies (LEAs) while subsidiaries of the POF sold products in the local market valuing Rs8,603m so the commercial sale at local market touched the total figure of Rs11,833m.

“LEAs placed orders for weapons and ammunition valuing Rs3,932m out of which products valuing Rs3,230m were handed over to them,” he said, adding that in the current fiscal year the LEAs placed 25 per cent more order as compared to last year.

“Profit earned by POF subsidiaries during the financial year 2016-17 including Wah Nobel Group of Companies made a profit of Rs1,264m, Wah Industries Ltd Rs609m, Wah Brass Mills Rs404m and Hi-Tech Plastics Rs22m hence the total profit earned by POF subsidiaries during the fiscal year remained Rs2,299m,” he added.

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2017