KARACHI: The multi million project – Police Vehicle Management System – of the Sindh police, aimed at ensuring GIS-based tracking of the patrolling vans has become dysfunctional following the apathy of the authorities concerned, Daily Times has learnt. According to reliable sources, the five-year project was launched in January 2008 with a total cost of Rs 941 million and it was to be completed by 2013. The project included; connecting all police stations of Sindh with the central data center at CPO, police vehicle management system GIS-based monitoring, surveillance system with recording on traffic sections, e-driving licence system with violation management system (traffic management system, e-ticketing/e-challan, driving licence issuance, interconnectivity of driving licence branches, interconnectivity of traffic sections), prisoner registration, record and movement system, PRRMS video conferencing system between central prison and High Court data centre and providing networking infrastructure, hardware and their connectivity at 500 locations in all over Sindh including all police stations, and offices of district and regional police officer, according to sources. The sources claimed that the trackers were installed in the police patrolling vans, however, the monitoring of the vehicles could not be materialised due to “ill-planning” of the higher authorities. Under the surveillance system, in case of any crime committed in any area, the nearest police mobile could be informed immediately. “The police had demanded establishment a separate monitoring room of the vehicle, however, the authorities insisted on assigning the monitoring job to a private tracker company”, a senior police officer who wished not to be named told Daily Times. “In case, if a DIG or SSP want to locate a mobile van within his jurisdiction, he has to contact the private tracking company and then give the mobile registration number for the tracking. We had to wait for couple of time and in the end we used to hear that (the officer) is not registered with the tracking company. After that we used to contact the IT in charge sitting in the Central Police Office with a request to locate the mobile vans, the entire process used to take days,” he maintained. “With repeated complaints from the senior police officers, the tracking system was handed over to the Command and Control Room of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation that too did not work,” the officer added. Daily Times repeatedly tried to contact e-Policing Project Director Tabbasum Abbasi, however, she did not attend the calls nor replied to text messages dropped on her cell phone.