BR Research recently sat down with Akbar Nasir Khan, Senior Superintendent Police (SSP) and CEO of the Punjab Safe City Authority (PSCA). The PSCA is the Punjab Government’s initiative for modernising the police force while bringing about a change in the police culture. Having a diversified career of over 20 years in the police force, Akbar has been instrumental in making the PSCA a reality. He holds a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University and an LLM from the University of London.
In this interview, we discuss the role of the PSCA in helping reduce crime as well as integration of counter-terrorism, emergency response and traffic management services in Punjab. Akbar also encourages the use of the PSCA-Public Safety mobile application by the citizens of Punjab.
BR Research: Please walk us through the history and concept behind the Punjab Safe City Authority.
Akbar Nasir Khan: The PSCA was the brain-child of Punjab Chief Minister, Shahbaz Sharif. The planning for the project started back in 2013. However, after being unsatisfied by the initial scope of the project and international consultants at that time, I was tasked by the CM to lead PSCA in 2015. This is when the project really took off.
A remarkable achievement was to get ARUP, which is one of the leading engineering consultancy firms in the world to be a part of PSCA’s development. Gradually, we built a good team and created a futuristic vision for PSCA.
The concept is to employ smart technology and equip Punjab Police with modern capabilities in order to enhance the security of the lives and property in the province. We have set up the Punjab Police Integrated Command Control and Communication (PPIC3) Centres to aid us in this endeavour.
BRR: What difference does the PSCA bring to the people of Lahore?
ANK: Crime rates in the metropolis have reduced considerably as a result of the efforts of PSCA in conjunction with other police departments. Our first priority is to create a new working culture for the police force of the province.
Shortage of response time is the second main indicator. These factors are still non-existent in many other organisations and were certainly absent in the police. After PSCA started operations, our target response time in the city has been less than 15 minutes.
Another major achievement for PSCA has been the revival of cricket in Lahore. We demonstrated our capability to provide the necessary security arrangements in real-time to the International Cricket Council (ICC). This convinced them to allow matches to take place in Lahore once again.
One thing I would like to highlight is that PSCA is much more than security. It’s about inclusive security, which includes honouring the rights of the citizens as well.
BRR: Please share some insights about the financial costs that the PSCA project has incurred so far.
ANK: Our aim from the start was to develop an integrated system. If you go to most jurisdictions in the world, traffic, counter-terrorism and emergency response are treated separately.
In a pioneer move, PSCA has integrated all three. This has allowed us to make the project more economical and effective. In fact, United Arab Emirate’s (UAE) Ambassador asked us for a presentation to help them in Dubai, while the Chinese Ambassador also praised our efforts in this regard.
Our technology cost is $135 million for the Lahore Safe City project. This is quite low when compared with similar projects in other parts of the world. The same vendors could not quote this price again for other safe city projects in Punjab.
BRR: Why do you say that the cost is one of the lowest in the world?
ANK: As this project was the first of its kind, there were no benchmarks for comparison. It was an experiment for Huawei as well. So, good negotiations by CM Punjab and the PSCA team led to a good deal. Operation and maintenance (O&M) for five years is also included in this cost.
At the same time, there has been no compromise on quality. London Metropolitan Police wants to learn from our communication network. At this moment, PSCA is the most advanced telecommunications project in Pakistan, even in the commercial sector.
BRR: Traffic congestion has become a nuisance in Lahore these days. How can this be reduced?
ANK: If there are more users on the road than it is designed for, it is termed as congestion. However, there has been no reliable data when it comes to the actual cost of congestion.
To analyze the cost of congestion, PSCA conducted a study with Syed Muhammad Hassan, an Assistant Professor at LUMS to come up with an estimate. A pilot project was done from Mall Road to Davis Road. Data was taken for three months from March-May 2016 at different times. There were two factors to be estimated. One was the time on the road and the other was the extra fuel burned due to overstay.
According to the results of the study, Rs100 billion is the cost of congestion every year in Lahore alone. This is more than the coalition support fund you get every year from America! Currently we are updating the sample size in our study to increase its scope.
As far as reducing congestion is concerned, there are a lot of options at our disposal. Some of these that we are considering introduction of E-Ticketing, imposing congestion charges on busy thoroughfares and restricting slow-moving traffic in certain areas.
BRR: Can you elaborate on this E-Ticketing measure you mentioned?
ANK: We have deployed urban infrastructure that will monitor traffic violations. If someone runs a red-light, they will be recorded by the camera and a traffic fine ticket will be sent to their home automatically.
BRR: The common myth is that most people don’t have cars registered in their own name. How will this initiative work if that is the case?
ANK: This myth is not true. PSCA analysed a sample size of 1000 cars on Mall Road, Lahore and found out that more than 70 percent of the cars were registered in the name of their owners. This shows that we should start believing that the majority of our data including car registrations is correct.
PSCA has also helped other departments such as Excise in improving their data centre. The old number plates had no practical application, but the new ones are machine readable and can be recognized by our safe city cameras.
These old number plates were first introduced in 2006 while the first camera was installed in 2016. This was a public sector fiasco that resources and money were spent but there was no machine to read it.
We are in the process of getting international standard number plates introduced that are big enough to be read by the sensors. The current number plates don’t allow the year of manufacture to be discerned. Moreover, the Excise department also wants the entire province of Punjab to have a single number-plate design and format.
As our safe city project will soon be present in ten cities of Punjab, this will allow us to monitor and track vehicles effectively. Data exchange will be more fluent while there will also be the added advantage of removing the price discrepancy of vehicles between cities due to number-plates.
BRR: How will PSCA help counter terrorism activities in the province?
ANK: The first remarkable feat is that all of our civilian intelligence agencies are present in this PPIC3 centre. The Intelligence Bureau (IB), Special Branch, Counter-Terrorism department, police, and traffic police all use PSCA as a platform. Our police urban information infrastructure is open for all legitimate partners.
If you look at the major studies conducted on counter-terrorism, a major barrier that exists is the lack of integration of information. Even if there is integration, sharing does not occur. But here if anyone comes up with a legitimate application of the data we gather, we are more than happy to share it.
Another thing I would like to add here is the role of community participation to thwart terrorism related activities. Our cameras are limited. Even if you put 20000 cameras in Lahore, they will still not be able to cover all areas. But people have installed CCTV cameras in almost all area. I believe if we put together community and state resources, terrorists will not find any place to hide.
BRR: Please tell us about the utility of the PSCA- Public Safety application for smartphones that the PSCA has launched.
ANK: The PSCA-Public Safety app is designed to be an alternative to the traditional 15 police helpline. If citizens utilize this application, our response time will be even faster because we can pinpoint their exact location.
This will allow us to mobilise our resources without an FIR being registered. For example, if there is a lost vehicle report on the application, we can input the relevant data and issue an alert for that specific vehicle. At the same time our cameras will also be able to detect the movement of that vehicle.
One fundamental change that I propose is that a report on this application should be treated as a FIR. The whole point of an FIR is to mobilise police resource to start investigating the crime. If this change can be made, then the criminal justice system will be mobilised in a much more effective manner.
Recently, our constables and police communication officers (PCOs) have also developed a portal for lost and found items and persons on this app. If you have lost your car, or if there is a missing person or child, you can report it in the lost section. Similarly, if you have found any item or person, you can report it in the found section.
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