Odho blames traders for street crime scare

Police chief claims crime rate in Karachi lower than many US, Indian cities

KARACHI:

AIG Javed Alam Odho has held the traders' community responsible for creating a sense of insecurity by creating hype about street crime, extortion and harassment on the media which scares away investors from the metropolitan city.

Addressing businessmen and industrialists at the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) on Friday, he said that the Safe City Project is indispensable for Karachi.

At least 6,000 CCTV cameras will be installed within a year and a modern data center will also be established, he said, adding that all this would have not been possible without the personal efforts of the chief minister.

AIG Odho said that if the Safe City project's funding is slashed due to the devastating floods in Sindh, then the KCCI must come forward and cooperate. He called upon the business community to increase command and control capacity of their crime monitoring centers to curb crimes.

While referring to the speech of the former KCCI president, the police chief said Zubair Motiwala sounded more a political leader than a businessman. "Crime rate in Karachi is lower than American and Indian cities," AIG Odho claimed. "Even crime rate in Lahore is higher than Karachi," he added. "If the daily wage earners are evicted from the city, it will have an impact on crime."

However, he conceded that the incidents of mobile snatching have increased 18 per cent during the last eight months.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 17^th, 2022.