The cameras and scanners placed at the entry and exit points of Faizabad, the main entrance for the traffic coming from GT Road, have been removed after being dysfunctional for a long time by the city authorities risking the security of the federal capital.
Under the Rs13 billion ‘Safe City’ project, over 1,900 surveillance cameras have been installed across the federal capital, with a Command and Control Centre set up to monitor important buildings, entry and exit points, roads, commercial centres and a sizable portion of the residential areas. Despite the multi billion rupees project, the number of the registered cases have not dropped. AIG Operations Abdul Qadir Qamar said that the Safe City project was a huge success and has greatly helped in curbing crime in the city. About functioning of the cameras, he said that few cameras may be out of order or under maintenance but overall they work fine.
“As many as 72-75 percent of cameras are working at any given time. They have a backup of 30 days,” he said, adding that the Safe City project was not fully completed as its first two phases have been completed and work on the next two was underway. “Face and ID recognition of car number plates with its original owner will be incorporated in the next two phases,” he said.
AIG Qamar said that as soon as funding was available they’ll go ahead and the Islamabad Police has taken up the case with the Ministry of Interior Affairs and the Ministry of Finance for funds. It is pertinent to mention here that the safe city model comprises of a host of features which unite to form a formidable technology driven approach in securing a specific region. The implementation of this project facilitated by the advent of the smart ID cards, electronic RFID tags, smart vehicle registration cards and the centralised databases (primarily NADRA citizen database and centralised vehicle database) for authentication of vehicles and individuals. The whole network of the security structure is additionally supported by a myriad of the security cameras and CCTVs.
