Half of Kochi’s surveillance cameras in disrepair

Kochi: The surveillance cameras that act as the watchdog ensuring security screening of critical areas of Kochi are in disrepair for the past one year.

As many as 55 cameras are not working owing to disconnection for metro work, cable complaint and damage due to accidents. Public address systems at traffic junctions are also not working, documents obtained under Right to Information Act show.

KELTRON, which installed the cameras, are responsible for their repair also. However, despite repeated reminders from district police chief, these cameras remain to be repaired. However, according to KELTRON, repair work could not be continued as payments for work done earlier was pending.

Critical areas like North Railway station, High court Junction, KSRTC bus stand, Kacherippady, Kadavanthra, NH bypass, Palarivattom, Manorama Junction, Edappally, Vytilla, Kakkanad Civil Station Junction, Vytilla Hub, Edappally Church are among the places affected.
The Kochi metropolitan area has a population of Kochi being 2.5 million and growing at the rate of three per cent poses high challenges to police and government officials to ensure security and law and order. Kochi is flooded with floating population, migrant labourers and tourists, which require constant attention to prevent and control any emergencies. The cameras are connected to Police control room to effectively deliver security in the city.

Kochi city was brought under the surveillance of Security cameras by KELTRON in three phases. As part of this, 99 cameras including 63 fixed and 36 dome cameras were installed in the 35 junctions of Kochi city from 2010 onwards.  Though all cameras had gone out of order over the years, 44 of them have been repaired recently and are currently functional.

Mr. S. P. Gopakumar, Project Manager of KELTRON, said in response to a query that the payment for Installation and servicing of surveillance cameras was to be made in full on completion of the work. The project covering Thiruvananthapuram, Cochin and Calicut was completed; but payments were not released due to noncompliance of formalities from the police authorities concerned. The total project cost was 2.26 crores.

Despite various reminders payments were not made which prompted the Managing Director of KELTRON to officially stop services for the project with effect from August 30, 2015. However, in the case of Thiruvananthapuram, Rs. 1.06 crores was released recently under the initiative of Director General of Police. So, all the cameras in the city are working as of date, he said.

In case of Cochin, around 45 cameras were dismantled at various junctions for works related to the metro rail project. Since August 2015, issues related to official dismantling of cameras, damage to cameras due to accidents and other problems were not being attended to.  Damages to cables to cables of camera connections are heavy and unrecorded. This posed a problem in repairing them, he added.