KARACHI: Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Wednesday constituted a joint group comprising officials of the National Radio and Telecommunication Corporation (NRTC) and the Safe City Authority to remove all the issues and bottlenecks and prepare the final PC-I of the Safe City project.

Giving a detailed presentation to the CM, the NRTC managing director said that the plan to install 10,000 high-definition (HD) cameras had been agreed.

“Out of 10,000 cameras, some of the cameras would have the ability to move around, while other cameras will be static,” he added.

The NRTC chief told the meeting that the entire system would be controlled through a central command and control centre with three regional centres.

“There would be surveillance through over 2,000 sites with the ability to analyse facial recognition, crowd and traffic amassing, mapping and other features,” he added.

Sources said that the main issue which came under discussion was laying of fiber optic cables for which various roads of the city would be dug up, which would require permission from different utility services of federal, provincial, and local governments, deeming it a lengthy process. Therefore, utilisation of the PTCL system or any other system came under discussion.

The sources said that the director general of the Sindh Safe City Project gave his assessment and presented ways to get the project kicked off at the earliest.

They said that he also raised the issues of handing over the responsibility of the operation of the entire system to NRTC or any other organisation.

The sources said that the chief minister, after listening to the entire discussion, constituted a joint committee of Sindh Safe City Authority and NRTC, under chief secretary.

He directed the chief secretary to hold a few meetings and remove all the issues and bottlenecks at the earliest.

The meeting was specially attended by Federal Defence Production Secretary retired Lt Gen Humayun Aziz, Chief Secretary Sohail Rajput, Sindh Safe City Project chief Maqsood Memon, NRTC chief retired Brigadier Asim Ishfaq and others.

Published in Dawn, May 19th, 2022