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$125M on Islamabad's Safe City, and police say it prevented zero crimes

1 June 2026 · Muhammad Safiullah, CEO, Camsense

Pakistan spent around $125M on Islamabad's Safe City programme. According to police, it prevented zero crimes. Before billions more are committed to its expansion, the full picture deserves attention.

The cost

• Original budget: Rs. 11.9B — ballooned to Rs. 15.9B, a 34% overrun.
• A 2025 expansion adds a further Rs. 7.4B.
• Total committed: roughly Rs. 23+ billion of public money.
• Much of it financed by an RMB 850M concessional loan from China's Eximbank — borrowing to build a system that doesn't work.

The cameras that aren't watching

• 2018: 542 of 1,840 cameras dysfunctional — just two years in.
• 2025: 80% of the equipment officially outdated.
• Cameras stolen from Faizabad Metro went unnoticed for over a week.

The verdict

Senior officers (reported in Dawn, July 2022) confirmed that not one crime was prevented and not one criminal arrested via the system in six years. The infrastructure was outsourced across three countries — Huawei hardware, Israeli-origin BriefCam analytics, a Chinese loan — with accountability nowhere.

The question isn't whether Islamabad needs a Safe City. It does. The question is why we are spending billions more with no accountability for the last failure. Pakistan deserves better — and it deserves systems measured by crimes prevented, not cameras installed.