LAHORE: Once termed a game-changer in safety, security and traffic management, the Punjab Safe City Authority (PSCA) project has reportedly started fading due to management problems, absence of the career structure for employees and persistently deteriorating work environment for them.

The $140m PSCA programme is grappling with many issues these days due to lack of interest of the current management to run the mega project, according to sources.

As a result of these issues, many qualified and trained officers, engineers and information technology experts are leaving jobs.

Nearly 650 ‘police communication officers’ in BPS-17 have been demanding regularisation of service since 2016, half of the provincial capital is not under surveillance because of non-functional cameras while e-challaning is also considerably low.

The self-governing authority was set up during the PML-N government under the Punjab Safe Cities Ordinance 2015 for the establishment and maintenance of an integrated command, control and communications programme.

Officers start quitting jobs

The officials, privy to the authority, bemoan that many key staffers of the PSCA have quit to join the private sector while the current employees are dissatisfied with their jobs due to low salary, bad work environment and no hope for an ‘acceptable career structure’.

Some of the IT experts of this organisation have given vent to their sentiments on social media to draw attention of Prime Minister Imran Khan about no prospects and lack of incentives after five years of service.

While sharing details, a senior official says the PSCA had hired around 650 ‘police communication officers’ with information technology, civil and software engineering background. Hired in BPS-14, they imparted training by the authority making them eligible to run the communication centres across the province. Over 600 of them were posted in Lahore.

The authority has been extending contract of these experts but service of none of them was regularised despite a lapse of five years, resulting in the crisis.

From operational point of view, the official says, the PSCA is lying low without doing anything significant for years. He adds that the issues with the contractor company, which built the PPIC3 Command centre, are still unresolved as the current management has neither the capacity to make decisions nor willingness for key solutions.

The official claims that only one app, with the name of Women Safety App, was relaunched by Chief Minister Usman Buzdar in the wake of the motorway rape incident in Nov 2020 thought the same app was launched in 2017 by the PML-N government.

About another major issue, he says presently half of the Lahore is not under surveillance because the authority has failed to engage the Chinese company for operation and maintenance (O&M) of the safe city cameras despite signing an agreement with it in 2016. He claims the company had installed nearly 8,500 surveillance cameras in Lahore under an agreement and was responsible for their O&M.

The foreign company refused to work on the O&M in 2019 but the PSCA had not been able to make satisfactory arrangements since then. There are reports that the authority has engaged a local firm for the O&M of the cameras against a cost more than that of the agreement signed with the Chinese company.

The official claims that O&M can’t be outsourced to any other firm without amendment to the original contract from all government forums, including Executive Committee of National Economic Council (ECNEC) in the federal government, which was signed between the parties on May 20, 2016. According to the law, the ECNEC approved over 10bn project.

The official further says that being the chairperson of the PSCA, Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar, has also not shown keen interest after visit of Prime Minister Imran Khan to this landmark project in February 2020. Only one meeting of the authority has taken place since last one year.

PSCA Chief Operating Officer Kamran Khan denies that the officials are quitting the authority due the unfriendly working environment, saying the officers/experts are quitting jobs to get better salaries in private market.

“Our many qualified and trained officers left jobs when they got better salary package in Dubai and other markets,” he tells Dawn.

Mr Khan terms the demand for regularisation by the 650 IT graduates against BPS-17 irrational, saying that they are already getting salary which is more than their qualifications.

“A summary has been moved to the Punjab government for the regularisation of their services in BPS-14.”

He also clarifies that the police communication officers were ‘overqualified’ when hired against the assignment they were doing in the PSCA. He says the authority is already compensating them in the form of annual increment and medical coverage for the entire family.

About the cameras, he claims, nearly 70pc of them are functioning after the authority engaged a private firm against Rs28m per month O&M cost compared to Rs24m, the original cost decided in the agreement signed with the foreign company.

“Though it was more than the original O&M cost, yet it is comparable with it,” Kamran Khan says.

To a question that the agreement between the PSCA and the foreign firm didn’t allow them to go into a contract with any other firm, he says the authority had no other option but to take this step.

To another query, the PSCA COO says the authority has also almost convinced the foreign company to restart its services for O&M of the safe city cameras.

“The foreign company will be back soon,” he claims.

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2021