Civic Center Security at Risk as Security Equipments of KDA are Out of Order
In a shocking revelation source confirmed that all the security equipments of KDA including Hydrolic Speed Breaker, walkthrough gates, metal detectors, and 52 CCTV cameras are out of order in Civic Center. Five Hydrolic speed breakers were fixed in the era of City District Government Karachi on 105 Million rupees, which had the capacity to block around 80 tonnes of Explosive vehicle are out of order due to no maintenance from a long time.
The Building of Civic Centre KDA was established in 1984-85 on the era of ZA Nizami the then Director-General of KDA, whereas it is one of the Shock Proof Building in Karachi City, it consisted into 10 floors with around 250 rooms and the total area is about 4,70,000 Square Yard.
Civic centre is mainly a property of KDA and the security, maintenance and renovation is also the responsibility of the said department.
Sources revealed that in one of the Karachi’s important building all the six emergency exit gates of building are locked, in case of any disaster people have only option to get exit from the gates from which they enter.
It was learned that in civic centre there are seven external and five internal gates however offices of Karachi Development Authority-KDA, Sindh Building Control Authority- SBCA, Excise & Taxation Department, K-Electric, House Building Finance Corporation-HBFC, NIT including Haabib Bank, National Bank of Pakistan Branches are also located in its jurisdiction .
Whereas sources informed that two floors of the building are in use of State Bank of Pakistan .
KDA Security Department which has the responsibility to secure civic center, From a long period its employees are deprived from getting overtime or late sitting allowance as they perform their duties even in the public holidays round a clock.
According to an officer of KDA requesting anonymity, around 16 Women on contract basis are working in KDA Security department in which majority have no knowledge that how the security department actually works because they allegedly backed by the Political Parties Union. On the other hand, some male employees also posted in the said department without any knowledge of security on the request of influential personalities.
An incident of security lapse happened last month when a man shot dead within the premises of civic center, which was a question mark on security that how the man entered in the area with a weapon.
Source added that around 100 to 110 employees are working in three shifts in KDA Security department, who have not get uniform from last four years and their one month salary is also due.
A Security Expert said the number of KDA Security department employees are insufficient to control the whole area, it should have to increase.
Moreover source stated that, there is a capacity of 300 to 330 car parking in civic centre but only in KDA an estimated 1700 contract and around 4500 permanent employees, however as per traffic engineering bureau survey report around fourty thousand peoples including office staff and visitors visit this place on a daily basis.
However, the Command & Control Centre where the law enforcement agencies monitor 4500 to 5000 cameras which fixed in different parts of the city also present in the building.
It was learned that there are CCTV Cameras fixed by the command and control center which are operating but the KDA security department have no direct access to these CCTV cameras in case of any incident they get the recording by making a request.
