Police have refuted media reports that their National CCTV camera Project is facing a massive malfunction of the devices.
Police says that only 450 CCTV cameras, were affected by the ongoing road and civil works in Entebbe, Mukono, Kira, Kawempe, Kampala Flyover, Mpigi, Hoima, Kyenjojo, Gulu, Mbale and Kasese.
“These disruptions arose due to civil works contractors’ failure to follow procedures, as well as their failure to conduct sufficient due diligence,” said Fred Enanga, the police spokesperson.
On Tuesday, the Daily Monitor ran a story titled “4 in 10 cameras do not function”. According to the story, in total, 1776 out of the 5153 cameras installed country-wide under the CCTV surveillance camera network superintended by police have malfunctioned, due to optic fibre cuts during road or utility works.
However, Enanga claimed that since 2018, a total of 5709 CCTV cameras have been installed at 2,027 camera sites nationwide. And out of the 5709 CCTV cameras installed countrywide, only 450 CCTV cameras were affected by the ongoing road and civil works.
“Despite the disruptions from the roads and civil works, our experts from the Directorate of ICT have in close coordination with the M/s Huawei Technologies Uganda, the Contractor of the CCTV Project, switched focus to the critical relocation and maintenance of the 450 cameras,” said Enanga.
He added, “They also continue to constantly monitor the nationwide performance of the CCTV Network operation which stands at 98%.”
Enanga claimed that the CCTV cameras have played a very big role in security forces to monitor spaces, track down offenders, promote awareness in the community and local neighborhoods, dismantle crime hotspots and gang members, increased the ability to solve crimes through hard evidence, improved detection rates and successful prosecution of enabled cases, helped in the interception of blacklisted vehicles.
“It is an invaluable piece of technology in road policing,” he said.