KARACHI: The Sindh government, in order to register foreign nationals data, particularly the Chinese and provide them security, has established Foreign Security Cell at Chief Police Office (CPO) in the city with its 31 branches in all district headquarters.

This emerged on Friday in a meeting held under the chairmanship of Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah here at CM House. The meeting was attended by Advisor for Law Murtaza Wahab, Chief Secretary Sohail Rajput, Home Secretary Saeed Mangnejo, IG Police Ghulam Nabi Memon, AIG CTD Imran Yakoob Minhas, AIG Karachi Javed Odho, Deputy DG Rangers, provincial heads of intelligence agencies and other concerned.

The chief minister said that the incidents like Karachi University where a suicide attack on the Chinese teachers would not be allowed to happen again. “We have to strengthen the security of all foreign nationals, particularly the Chinese working on CPEC and non-CPEC projects in the province,” he said and added he had given guidelines to the police and other law enforcement agencies to chalk out a detailed foolproof security plan.

Mr Shah said that security of Chinese nationals working on CPEC and non-CPEC projects was a joint security of all the concerned stakeholders. “Any incident threatening the security of Chinese nationals employed on various projects will have an impact on national level,” he said and added the Karachi University incident highlighted the vulnerability of Chinese nationals’ security working on non-CPEC projects.

The chief minister was told that at present, eight CPEC projects were running in six districts of the province where around 4,000 Chinese were working. In 2016, the police had created a Special Protection Unit (SPU) to provide security cover to CPEC projects based in Sindh.

The Home Secretary said that Sindh police, Pak Army, Rangers, FC and private security guards were providing security cover to the CPEC projects under the umbrella of Special Security Division (SSD) in the light of SOPs issued by NECTA. It was disclosed that there were 214 projects, including 21 non-CPEC while 193 non-CPEC projects were privately sponsored where 2300 Chinese were working.

IG Police Ghulam Nabi said that a Foreign Information Desk had also been established by the Special Branch at Karachi Airport to register the data of all foreign nationals, including Chinese. He added that the FIA had been requested to provide 40 dashboard terminals for entry and exit data of foreign nationals and it was yet to be done.

The chief minister was told that a well-coordinated security mechanism for Chinese security was being prepared. The prime minister formulated a national action plan for their [Chinese] security which had been developed for which a task force had been constituted under the ministry of interior. The chief minister directed the IG police to keep the Chinese Consulate in the loop for the proposed security arrangement and compiling of the data.