KARACHI: Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Friday approved Rs30 billion to launch the Karachi safe city project.

He took this decision while presiding over a meeting to review progress of the project.

The meeting was attended by Information Technology Minister Taimur Talpur, Chief Secretary Mumtaz Shah, Planning chairman M. Waseem, Home Secretary Usman Chachar and others.

As many as 10,000 CCTV cameras would be installed in the city in three phases under the project and each phase would be completed within 12 months starting from the next financial year, 2021-22.

The meeting was told that the National Radio & Telecommunication Corporation (NRTC) had submitted technical and financial proposals, which needed to be considered by the evaluation committee.

The chief minister approved the constitution of a nine-member technical committee to be headed by the chief operating officer (COO) of the safe city project to evaluate the NRTC proposal.

10,000 surveillance cameras will be installed at over 2,000 spots in the city in three phases

He also approved the proposal of assigning the charge of CEO to Muqadus Haider and chief technical officer to Tabasum Abbasi. Notifications for the evaluation committee, CEO and technical officers would be issued shortly.

The technical committee will evaluate the technical and financial proposals in line with the PC-I documents and would also evaluate the project phasing as recommended by the NRTC in consultation with the planning and development department.

The technical committee will also look after overall activities of the project, including its execution.

The chief minister approved the execution plan under which 10,000 cameras would be installed in three phases.

In the first phase, cameras would be installed at all the entry/exit points of the city and in district South for Rs9.9bn.

In the second phase, cameras would be installed in three districts, to be selected later on, for Rs9.8bn.

In the third and the concluding phase, three more districts would be covered for Rs9.7bn.

The chief minister directed the finance department to arrange Rs10bn for the first phase in the next financial year.

“I want to start the project in the start of financial year 2021-22,” he said.

The chief minister also directed Mr Waseem of the planning and development department to start the process to get approval of the PC-1 from all the relevant forums by the end of the current financial year.

Mr Shah was told that 8,000 cameras would be 12 megapixel (MP) and 2,000 of eight MP. In this way, 10,000 cameras would be installed at over 2,000 locations with solar back-up.

There would be central and regional command centres and a database centre.

The chief minister was told that at present 2,196 cameras were installed at 538 locations in the city, of them 1,201 belonged to the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, 198 to IT dept and 155 to Sindh police.

Published in Dawn, April 17th, 2021