If government claims and complaints are to be believed, Islamabad’s Safe City Project is in shambles. As many as 600 to 900 CCTV cameras out of a total installed 1,800 cameras are either out of order or their grabbing quality is poor.
While the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) is looking into verifying complaints that 600 CCTV cameras of the capital are not functional, the federal information minister claimed that 900 CCTV cameras are out of order and the rest cannot read vehicle registration plates or people`s faces.
The issues attracted attention after the abduction of Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Tahir Dawar from the capital.
Now, Director General, NAB Rawalpindi has been directed to submit details of expenditures incurred on the project and details of the start of the project and reasons of its dysfunctional, says a NAB press release. Chairman NAB has also ordered to investigate the reasons for the project failure and determine who was responsible.
The Rs14 billion Safe City Project was launched in Islamabad under the PPP in 2008 and continued until the tenure of the last PML-N government. In addition to installing CCTV cameras, three truck mounted scanners were also imported from China and installed at points of entry into Islamabad.
A total of 1,840 cameras were installed all over the capital and the project was inaugurated in 2016. Since then, many cameras have begun developing faults and more than 600 are not working properly.
