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Rawalpindi Safe City Project is a project started by the Rawalpindi Government following the footprint of Islamabad Safe City under which the management takes steps towards improving the safety and well-being of the citizens and using digitalization for the cause. Under the same project, the administration is finalizing a plan to monitor every section of the city by placing 4,000 closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras on the roads.
Commissioner Saqib Manan presided over a meeting to discuss the status of the Rawalpindi Safe City Project said a spokesman for the Commissioner’s Office. He told that the commissioner said that in order to increase surveillance and keep a close check on criminal activity in Rawalpindi, the Punjab government had chosen to engage in a contract with the Safe City Authority to put CCTV cameras in the city.
The meeting was informed that 950 locations had been chosen in Rawalpindi where around 4,000 cameras would be installed to monitor the city. The integrated system these CCTV cameras will operate under would assist in reducing crime and strengthen the city’s law and order situation.
These cameras will provide huge assistance to the police in its anti-crime activities including car tracking and surveillance, the idea would also help the police and the local government in managing traffic signals. Additionally, the project would provide security during significant public events.
The commissioner has really optimistic thoughts about this system and claimed that this system would also be implemented in Rawalpindi in order to preserve peace and order, traffic control, and other public amenities.
A control and command center would be built at the City Police Office, according to the spokesperson. He continued by saying that it would govern quick emergency and police responses, including intelligent traffic management, police unit dispatch, Rescue 1122 response, criminal identification, and virtual surveillance.
It would regulate swift emergency and police responses, such as intelligent traffic management, dispatch of police units, Rescue 1122 response, criminal identification, and virtual surveillance, he added.
These CCTV cameras would work under an integrated system which would help control crime and improve the law and order situation in the city, he added. The project would help the police and the local administration in traffic signal management besides vehicle surveillance and tracking. The project would also play a key role in ensuring security during important public events.
A similar project was executed in Islamabad last month in which 191 artificial intelligence (AI) enabled cameras have been installed at the entry and exit points of the capital. Following the directions of the inspector general of police (IGP), the federal police are in the process of installing cameras in the city to make security and surveillance more effective in the federal capital. A federal police spokesperson said:
“Due to these cameras, a taxi driver involved in sexual harassment was also arrested as a woman registered a complaint of sexual harassment on the police’s helpline ‘Pukar-15’. Upon receiving the complaint, the staff of Safe City Islamabad took immediate action and traced the vehicle, and shared the information with the police officials concerned. The suspect was arrested and a case was registered against him in the Secretariat Police Station,”
The surveillance and crime-control can hugely benefit from this project and most of the commissioner’s claims can come to reality but the active maintenance and regulation of the cameras are necessary for the project to have a long-term effect. Also, the management has to be actively responding to the input received from the cameras, otherwise merely installing the cameras can do no good.
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