PESHAWAR: Chief Minister Sohail Afridi on Wednesday said that his government had proposed to the federal government to form a grand jirga of the stakeholders of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to bring peace and take up the issue with Afghanistan.
“In the last few meetings with the representatives of the federal government, we proposed that a jirga comprising all the stakeholders including members of political and religious parties, parliamentarians, elders should be formed and go to Afghanistan to hold talks over the issue of peace. However, actions started before any progress could be made,” Sohail Afridi said while addressing the opening ceremony of the Peshawar Safe City Project.
He said the public, political parties and parliament must be taken into confidence over the issue of peace as well as the situation in the region after the attack on Iran. “I want to make it clear that we were, are and will be standing for Pakistan,” the chief minister said. He said some policies need to be reconsidered. Afridi lauded the KP Police for foiling a number of bids after attacks in Islamabad and Balochistan.
The chief minister inaugurated the project at the Malik Saad Shaheed Police Lines that will ensure monitoring of important parts of Peshawar through closed-circuit television cameras for the purpose of security.
Inspector General of Police Zulfiqar Hameed, Chief Secretary Shahab Ali Shah, cabinet members and officers were present on the occasion. “Under the Safe City project, a total of 133 locations have been covered and 711 CCTV cameras installed in different parts of Peshawar,” Capital City Police Officer Mian Saeed Ahmad told The News.
Apart from installation of CCTV cameras, the project includes 20 smart surveillance vehicles, four drones with drop capability and six drones of long and medium range. It also includes thermal cameras and body worn cameras.
The command and control center of the project has been set up at the Malik Saad Shaheed Police Lines. Safe city projects are also underway in many other districts of the province. In Dera Ismail Khan, CCTV cameras are being installed at 88 points while cameras will be installed at 76 places in Bannu and 47 locations in Lakki Marwat.
Besides, PC-1 has been prepared for the Safe City project in Tank, Karak, and North Waziristan. In Tank, 45 cameras will be installed at 40 points in Karak, and 37 places in North Waziristan. The Safe City Project was proposed for Peshawar, Lahore and Islamabad in 2009. The projects were completed in Islamabad and Lahore many years ago.
It was suggested later that since the actual project was estimated to cost billions of rupees, a relatively small project to install a few hundred closed-circuit television cameras can help secure the KP provincial capital from terrorist and criminal attacks to a great extent.
These CCTV cameras were needed at all the key points of Peshawar and other major towns of the province for years. In recent years, a number of high-profile cases were worked out with the help of technology, especially cellular phone data and CCTV cameras installed by locals at offices and homes.
Many extortionists, killers, robbers, snatchers and many others involved in different kinds of crimes and terrorism incidents were held mostly through CCTV footage and cell phones in the last few years.
Under the actual Safe City project proposed in 2009, over 6000 CCTV cameras were proposed to be installed at over 850 points across the provincial capital.Authorities said the current project will be upgraded with the passage of time once more funds are made available.
