Govt to restart Gwadar Safe City Project with escalated cost
After delay of more than six years the government will restart Gwadar Safe City Project with an escalated cost of Rs4,966.905 million, which is 68.26pc higher than the original estimated cost.
Gwadar Safe City Project (Phase-1) was originally approved in 2016 with an estimated cost of Rs2,951.778 million and completion time of 36 months (till June 2019), however the project was delayed as only Rs788.00 million of the funds have been utilized in more than six years, official source told The Nation.
The original PC-I of the project ‘Gwadar Safe City (Phase-I) costing Rs10.752 billion was submitted by government of Balochistan in 2015. However, the project was approved by the CDWP on 19th Feb, 2016 at a cost of Rs2,951.77 million on 50:50 cost sharing basis by the federal & provincial government.
The project has been considerably delayed and the Prime Minister Office (PMO) directed that PC-I of Gwadar Safe City Project may be implemented after resolving all the issues. Now it has been decided that PC-I be revised immediately without further delay.
Now the cost of the project in the revised PC-I is being enhanced to Rs4,966.905, while the timeline is being extended to 102 months till June 2024, the source said.
The project will be funded by the federal government and provincial government of Balochistan. The federal share is Rs2653.28 million while provincial share is Rs2313.62 million.
Gwadar Safe City has been developed to help all government stakeholders including city administration, Gwadar police and other Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) to mitigate the security & communication challenges.
The Gwadar Safe City Project (GSC) will promote interoperability across law enforcement, emergency services and other government agencies (public health, border control, social services) to streamline operations and provide ‘situational awareness’ to all stakeholders involved in the management of a city’s security, the source said.
The project envisages providing safe city for the residents of Gwadar at the identified strategic locations and also helping the government law enforcement agencies in detecting crime and investigating crime by collecting evidence.
Gwadar is relatively an unsafe city, with main western governments advising their citizens against traveling to the city. The current infrastructure is insufficient to cater the security needs of Gwadar city, the source said.
In first phase, 640 cameras will be installed on approximately 130 sites, a state-of-the-Art C4I building will be established, 180km fibre optic cable will be laid. Similarly a state-of-the-art data center will be established in C4I building.
Giving further details, the source said that the day to day operations of the system will be handled by Balochistan police. Post warranty maintenance for three years shall be done by the EPC contractor, which will be extendible for another four years (for a total of seven years). EPC contractor would be bound for providing three years of service. After the execution of the project, PMU of Gwadar Safe City project will be executed by the GSC project steering committee. The command, control, communication and intelligence (C4I) centre constructed at Gwadar will continue to run under the Balochistan Police Department in collaboration with Home Department and the backup of data will be maintained through fibre optic cable maintained in the C4I of Gwadar Safe City (GSC).