Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has greenlit a Rs. 5.5 billion agreement between the Sindh Police Department and the National Radio and Telecommunication Corporation (NRTC) for the inaugural phase of the Smart Safe City project in Red Zone, Karachi.
The red zone encompasses the CM House, Governor House, and their surrounding areas in Saddar. It took the Sindh government almost eight years to fund this project which was envisaged and launched in 2016.
The agreement approval took place during a meeting convened at the CM House, attended by Home Minister Zia Lanjar, Mayor Karachi Murtaza Wahab, Chief Secretary Asif Hyder Shah, IG Police Riffat Mukhtar, NRTC MD Brigadier Asim Ishaque, Sindh Safe Cities Authority DG Asif Aijaz Shaikh, and other officials.
In the meeting, it was revealed that the Smart Safe City project would see the installation of 1,300 CCTV cameras at 300 locations in the red zone and the airport corridor, equipped with Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) capability and backed by solar-powered battery backup within eight hours. Additionally, a 193 km optic fiber cable network would connect 18 police stations. The cameras would be linked to the Command and Control Center of the Central Police Office, with plans to establish a permanent C&CC at the Karachi Police Office.
The Smart Safe City project is designed to incorporate facial recognition and number plate recognition systems. It will facilitate monitoring of hospitals for criminals/suspects, multiple camera tracking against suspects, response coordination, criminal database management, and integration with national databases.
Expressing his enthusiasm, the chief minister stated that the project, long-awaited, was finally coming to fruition and expressed hope that it would fulfill its objectives. He urged NRTC to expedite the first phase, aiming for completion within 18 months instead of the planned 24.
Highlighting the pressing need for such initiatives, the CM emphasized Karachi’s burgeoning population, expected to exceed 20.38 million by 2030. Controlling crime, managing critical incidents, maintaining public order, disaster management, and ensuring traffic safety were identified as top priorities, with technological integration seen as the key to their solution.
The conceptual framework of the Smart Safe City Karachi entails swift emergency response, digital forensics, incident analysis, situational awareness through centralized operations, real-time monitoring, systematic traffic and crowd management, prompt action against incidents, and intelligent data correlation from various databases.
In August 2023, CM Shah performed a soft launch of an integrated “C5ISR-based” safe city project. C5ISR stands for command, control, communication, computer, cyber security, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Officials say the fresh contract between the NRTC and the Sindh Safe Cities Authority is “a kind of execution” of the same soft launch.
