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KARACHI, Feb 1: As the ambitious e-policing project crawls through the conventional government labyrinth, computer hardware meant for the venture has begun to gather dust in police offices across the city, it has emerged.
“If the slow pace of the e-policing project, which has a price tag of Rs944 million, does not accelerate soon, there are fears that the huge investment may go down the drain,” an official of the police department said.
Starting from the office of the head moharar up to the office of the provincial police office, branded hardware has been installed with networking. But officers of the rank of superintendents of police, or those who are computer literate, use the hardware for internet browsing, far short of its real purpose, a survey conducted by Dawn showed. “Except for web browsing or composing drafts, there is not much use of the hardware,” an officer said.
Almost every office in the Central Police Office has been equipped with two sets of hardware. Similarly, every field office, such as that of the station house officer (SHO), deputy superintendent of police (DSP) and the superintendent of police (SP) have been provided with the same sets of hardware.
But irrespective of rank, a majority of the officers are not quite sure about the full potential of the hardware that has been placed in their offices, the survey showed. However, the terminal dedicated for e-policing performs fully, except for the function of e-policing.
The desktop monitors do have icons for e-policing, but they are not operative, a hands-on visit by this reporter showed.
In the offices of head moharars and SHOs, both hardware units are totally out of use as most SHOs are computer illiterate. They are not even using it for web browsing.
The branded computers with black flat-screen monitors, central processing units and printers are meant for e-policing, and the other set of equipment, having only a monitor and a printer placed atop a computer table, is meant for the Automated Fingerprints Identification System, a foreign-funded project being implemented by the National Police Bureau, an officer explained.
New Town ASP Dr Khurram Rashid said that if the project was delayed for another few months, the hardware would become out of date as technology kept changing fast.
“I have seen the hardware placed out in the dust at an SP’s office due to some renovation work taking place there”, ASP Rashid said. “One may imagine the treatment meted out to the equipment at the offices of lower rank officers.”
The grand project of e-policing has a budget of Rs944 million, provided by the Sindh government, and there is no constraint of cash flow since the required funding has already been provided by the government. “Despite the cash flow, the project’s implementation is very slow,” a senior police officer remarked.
‘Typical govt working’
A senior police officer, requesting anonymity, said he was initially included in the committee for the e-policing project, but seeing the ‘typical government style of working’, he requested that he be excluded from the committee.
Since the provincial IT department is also a stakeholder in the project, it has advertised 150 vacancies for the e-policing project.
However, there is no denying that the role of the IT personnel could not be ignored in the project of e-policing till such time when at least an ASI could replace him, observed an officer associated with the project.
For the purpose, the Karachi police have formed an e-policing directorate and dedicated three floors of the Central Police Office, where development work is in progress.
The Karachi police also plan to integrate the police helpline 15 call centre into the e-policing directorate aiming to minimise the response time to a distress call.
The directorate would be equipped with a digital map where the caller’s address will automatically appear if he or she is calling from a landline number. Thus the nearest police mobile would be directed to respond to the call.
The project director of e-policing, Tabassum Abbasi, said the project was being expedited in phases.
“There are several applications at the moment which are in the testing phase,” she said.
Asked if the hardware placed in offices would become obsolete by the time the project became fully operational, Ms Abbasi said software applications being developed and implemented would not become obsolete and there was a provision of repair and replacement of the hardware if it developed faults.
“The project is so elaborate that it cannot be implemented in one go and needs phase-wise implementation,” she said. “The hardware has a life of three to five years.”
There is an ongoing training programme for policemen. The project deadline is 2011, whereas its physical implementation began in January 2008. But its feasibility had started in 2005.
