LAHORE: The Punjab Safe Cities Authority (PSCA) has launched a ‘mega’ project to expand the scope of digital surveillance network across 98 tehsils of the province with an estimated cost of Rs16 billion.

The safe city operations are functional in nearly 40 cities following a province-wide network rollout on the directions of the Punjab chief minister with thousands of high-definition cameras and integrated systems.

According to an official, the new programme, at tehsil-level with 10,000 new cameras, was envisioned after reports revealed that the project yielded encouraging results with 70pc reduction in heinous/serious crime across Punjab.

The official said that Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz had greenlit the project to extend the digital surveillance operations to 7,602 union councils of the province making it one of South Asia’s most extensive digital policing networks.

He said that the chief minister visited China in August 2026 for technology transfer, artificial intelligence (AI), and digital governance partnerships. On her return, he said, she had held a series of meetings aimed at digital revolutions in various sectors, particularly in transferring technology from China to rural settings across Punjab.

Talking about a fresh report, the official said that on Sept 20, not a single emergency 15 call related to robbery, street crime or snatching was reported in any of the 39 Safe City-covered districts of Punjab. He declared that the coordination for prevention of crime, surveillance and rapid response mechanism between the PSCA, Crime Control Department (CCD) and district police had yielded positive results.

The official said that the Safe City’s operations centres were providing law-enforcement agencies with timely intelligence and operational support through video analytics, digital evidence and technology-enabled monitoring. At present, 43 smart safe city centres were providing continuous surveillance and technology-based support to police and other law-enforcement agencies, he added.

The centres were using advanced video analytics and digital evidence to identify suspicious activity, monitor crime patterns and assist police in timely and effective action, he added.

Detailing the surveillance operations, the official said that more than a dozen in-house AI systems, including automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), facial recognition, smart vision, crime analytic and intelligent traffic management, were already functioning to help analyse feeds, identify suspicious behaviour, detect stolen vehicles and help police predict crime hotspots.

To a question, he said that more than 24,000 high-definition surveillance cameras were currently monitoring roads, markets, highways and public spaces of Punjab.

Technology-driven measures will continue to be expanded as part of ongoing efforts to advance the ‘”Safe Punjab” initiative, he said.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2026