Police has shelved the plan for installing trackers in the vehicles of Mujahid Squad. The proposal was aimed at keeping a check and improving the response time of patrolling vehicles, Pakistan Today has learnt on Tuesday.
The idea was a brainchild of former SP Mujahid Squad Muntazir Mehdi in order to draw crime prevention and detection strategy to secure society especially from street crimes.
The work on the idea was started by Muntazir with a positive nod of former Capital City Police Officer Aslam Tareen during last months of 2010. Initially, Mujahid Squad got trackers installed in eight vehicles of in a testing mood without spending a single penny. A local company with a name of Traffico, as a sample, installed these trackers which are functioning and the movement of the vehicles could easily be monitored from the Rescue 15 Control Room.
Sources told that during preliminary research for the installation of system, Mehdi asked different companies to bid.
Mehdi said initially, different companies placed bids for the installation of trackers between Rs 10,000 to Rs 23,000 as fee for each vehicle and Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000 per month charges for each of them.
He said the idea was to fight crime scientifically so that crime prevention and detection could be improved in the city in order to counter the challenge.
While briefing about the idea, he said in fact, they wanted to get all the vehicles in the system so that one officer of DSP rank could handle the affairs of the city at a time.
“Once, anyone reported any crime, the officer sitting inside the control room could identify the location of the caller and also knows the availability of patrolling vehicles available in the radius of 5 km of the scene. The officer could easily ask one vehicle to reach the crime scene while could order remaining vehicles to block the escaping points of the criminals about whom the caller had already given details to the police officials at control room.”
“A senior DSP ranked police officer with good sense of fighting crime could easily get several gangs busted only using the system”, Mr, Mehdi added. He, while giving further details, said the initiative was to initially get trackers installed in the vehicles of Mujahid Squad, then in the vehicles of Operations Wing of Lahore Police and later for Investigation.
Mehdi said he had proposed the former CCPO for giving a section of Crime Record Office under the administrative control of Mujahid Squad so that they could generate funds from those who required police’s clearance in order to purchase or cell their vehicles.
He said that they were already generating funds to give 15 call records to different citizens, who required to furnish proofs to different insurance companies in order to get insurances from the companies concerned, but the cost of those documents were quite nominal which were only helping Mujahid Squad to meet the maintenance expanses of 15 Control Room.
He said if they had even managed funds for the required initial investment that would not have solved the problem, because a specific and good amount as a monthly fee was needed to keep the tracking system working that could only be manage if government approved any funds for the said activity. He said he did not have any idea if the forthcoming officials of Mujahid Squad had moved summery to the top cops and to the authorities in the Punjab government or not.
SP Mujahid Squad Captain (r) Romail Akram, while talking to Pakistan Today, said the idea was shelved due to non-availability of fund. He said earlier the issue was taken up at personal level but later was dropped due to financial constraints.
He said according to his information, the Punjab government had a plan to take police on board as well on IT City Project so as to computerise the system of Lahore Police.
“I had heard that the Punjab government has some plans to develop a tracking system for police vehicles and installation of security cameras under IT City Project,” Romail Akram added.