Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has directed the Safe City Authority to initiate facial and vehicle recognition operations from February, aiming to enhance security under the Karachi Safe City Project. The move includes identifying fancy, fake, and dubious number plates and reporting them to the police for action. Chairing a meeting at the CM House on New Year’s Day, Shah emphasized deploying facial recognition technology to monitor suspicious individuals traveling in vehicles or on foot.
The Chief Minister also announced plans to extend the Safe City initiative to Hyderabad and Sukkur. He instructed the authority to submit cost estimates for these projects to the Planning and Development Department for approval. The Karachi Safe City Project is being rolled out in five phases with an estimated cost of Rs34.95 billion.
The project involves installing 12,000 CCTV cameras at 2,525 pole sites over an area of 1,700 km. Additionally, 110 Emergency Response Vehicles are to be deployed, with five equipped with advanced cameras capable of facial and number plate recognition. During the meeting, Sindh Safe Cities Authority Director General Asif Aijaz Shaikh briefed attendees, including Home Minister Zia Lanjar, Chief Secretary Asif Hyder Shah, and Inspector General of Police Ghulam Nabi Memon, about the project’s progress.
The first phase will include installing 1,300 CCTV cameras, comprising 1,044 new cameras and upgrades to 256 existing ones, over 193 km. Work is underway at 200 identified police sites, with 23 Emergency Response Vehicles being prepared for deployment in Karachi.
The Chief Minister instructed the procurement of 110 vehicles equipped with modern surveillance technology to expedite project completion. He was also informed that the installation of a video surveillance system has commenced and is expected to be operational by the end of the year. The Safe Cities Authority headquarters in DHA is functional, and construction of a new building on Shahrah-e-Faisal has begun.
Of the 300 identified pole sites, 200 have had their foundations laid, and 198 installations are completed, with 33 already operational. Approvals from the cantonment boards are still pending, while permissions from the Karachi Municipal Corporation and Civil Aviation Authority have been secured. Renovation work at the first Point of Presence (POP) site at PS Boat Basin is complete, and additional POP sites across Karachi police stations, including Saddar, Clifton, Shahrah-e-Faisal, and Malir City, are being handed over for operation. The Chief Minister tasked Inspector General Ghulam Nabi Memon with closely monitoring the project’s progress to ensure the timely initiation of the second phase.
