Bangladesh considers Pakistan’s ‘failed’ Safe City project ‘exemplary’ ?

POBNEWS24, Dhaka July 9, 2026 : Bangladesh’s Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed has called Pakistan’s ‘Safe City’ initiative ‘exemplary for Bangladesh’, but it has been dubbed a ‘white elephant’ in various media outlets in the country. A government audit report has painted a grim picture of the project’s utter failure, unprecedented corruption and ineffective monitoring.
A report published in Pakistan’s influential English daily The Dawn on January 24, 2022, referred to the Punjab Safe City Authority (PSCA) as a ‘white elephant’ and said, ‘No results have been achieved despite spending huge sums on this project.’
According to several Bangladeshi media reports, on July 7, during a bilateral meeting with Pakistan’s Minister for Interior and Narcotics Control Syed Mohsin Naqvi at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, USA, Interior Minister Salahuddin Ahmed said that Pakistan’s ‘Safe City’ initiative could be exemplary for Bangladesh in terms of urban security and the use of modern technology.
According to several reports in The Dawn, the extreme futility of Pakistan’s Safe City Authority was exposed during the 2022 bombing of Lahore’s Anarkali Bazaar. At that time, as government cameras were useless to identify the terrorists, investigators were ultimately forced to use footage from privately installed CCTV cameras.
Pakistani journalist Asif Chowdhury’s report said, “Out of about 8,000 CCTV cameras in Lahore, only 2,000 were operational at any given time. In addition, 92 4G towers were shut down during the rainy season due to lack of generators or backup facilities, resulting in emergency services being disrupted. Even the headphones of 33 police call center systems were found broken.”
The report also states that the project has “completely failed” to provide security to citizens despite spending more than Rs 900 crore.
The Dawn report said that despite Pakistan’s extensive surveillance capabilities, terrorism, extremism and political violence have not been eradicated. Long-standing problems such as delays in investigation processes, limited forensic capacity and judicial deadlock cannot be solved by installing cameras alone. Adopting this technology at a huge cost without proper institutional reforms and legal safeguards has only served as an “expensive coating” on an ineffective system.
Regarding the project, Bangladesh Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed said that the then Senior Secretary of the Bangladesh Home Ministry, currently the Cabinet Secretary, had visited the ‘Safe City’ model of Islamabad, Lahore, Multan and Karachi in September 2025. Using that experience, Pakistan can provide technical and strategic assistance to make Bangladesh’s cities safer.
In addition, the meeting discussed various issues of mutual interest, including prevention of drug smuggling, regional stability and the Rohingya crisis. At this time, the Home Minister sought Pakistan’s cooperation in providing higher training to police officers to increase the professionalism and efficiency of the Bangladesh Police.