The Punjab Safe Cities Authority and Chinese company Huawei signed a settlement agreement at the PSCA headquarters, here on Thursday.
The Chinese company would be responsible to operationalise the entire PSCA infrastructure as per the settlement agreement. The Punjab government would not have to pay any additional amount and the Chinese company would carry out the maintenance work at previous dollar rate of Rs 104 as per the initial agreement.
According to details, Chinese Council General Zhao Shiren and Adviser on Home Affairs Umar Sarfraz Cheema, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Raja Basharat and Minister for Irrigation Col (retd) Hashim Dogar was chief guest at the ceremony.
Acting IGP Punjab Kanwar Shah Rukh, Deputy CEO of the Chinese company Ahmad Bilal Masood and senior officials from Huawei also attended the contract signing ceremony.
Speaking to the media, Chief Operating Officer (COO) Muhammad Kamran Khan said that it was a landmark achievement of the Punjab government and Safe Cities to convince the Chinese company to agree to Punjab government’s terms and withdraw from all its demands.
He said that the engineers of Huawei would come to Pakistan and make the project fully functional in three to four months. The COO said that the Chinese company would provide all necessary hardware and software for the project at its own expense.
He said that all the issues between the PSCA and Huawei had been resolved while the Punjab cabinet had already approved the settlement agreement.
Earlier, there were detailed deliberations on the agreement in the cabinet and sub-committees, after which the two sides achieved the milestone.
