Panama, Nov 9 (EFE) .- Panama today signed a contract for approximately 20 million dollars with the Canadian Commercial Corporation to establish the Interagency Center for Security and Emergency Operations "C5", in order to ensure public safety, reducing the response time in cases of emergency.

The contract was signed by the Minister Panamanian Security, Alexis Bethancourt, and Vice President of Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC), Andrew Shisko, reported the Ministry of Security of Panama (Minseg).

Bethancourt said after the signing ceremony that the C5 will be integrated by links from the four security agencies and the emergency response agencies of the State, which are part of the Task Force Joint (FTC).

The FTC is made up of the National Aeronaval Service (Senan), the National Border Service (Senafront), the National Police (PN) and the National Migration Service (SNM), attached to the Ministry of Security; computerized reception, attention and dispatch of emergency calls with georeferencing in police units, high-definition video surveillance towers, panic buttons, citizen collaboration tools and video analysis.

The contract signed today is backed by a Cooperation Framework Agreement between Panama and Canada, approved last January through Law 14 of 2017.

The Canadian Ambassador, Anne Karine Asselin, emphasized that CCC is a state company of the Government of her country that has "more than 70 years of experience in the acquisition of security goods and services through Government-to-Government contracting. "

For his part, the Panamanian Deputy Minister of Security, Jonattan Del Rosario, indicated in the presentation of the project that C5 means "Command, Control, Computing, Communications and Quality".

Del Rosario said that this concept has its origin in the Operations Center of the State Mexico, which provided technical cooperation to the Minseg during the diagnostic study of the project.

The vice minister recalled that since instructions were received from President Juan Carlos Varela to advance with this initiative in 2016, official missions were carried out to the main Operations Centers of countries such as USA, Canada, China, United Kingdom and Mexico, to know the advantages and experiences in the application of this type of systems.

On December 27, 2016, the Government of the State of Mexico and Panama signed an agreement to replicate a center technological control and security that works in that Mexican region.

The process culminated on October 25 with the selection of CCC as the contractor responsible for providing the integrate all the technology components of Project C5, Phase 1, for 12.2 million dollars of investment and 7.5 million for maintenance services until 2021, explained Del Rosario.

Phase 1 of the C5 will be in operation for the visit of Pope Francis on the occasion of World Youth Day (WYD) in January 2019 and will allow integration with other existing video surveillance systems such as the Municipal Surveillance Center of the Mayor's Office of Panama, recently inaugurated.

On October 26, the Cabinet (council of ministers) of Panama gave its endorsement to establish the security and emergency operations center.