CCTV system for city surveillance

Colombo (PTI) Sri Lanka’s defence authorities will unveil the country’s first closed-circuit television camera system to maintain surveillance of the capital, police said today.

The network of over 100 cameras installed in the Colombo metropolitan area will be launched on 29 December and later expanded to other areas too, a police official said.

The network will be used for “national security purposes” as well as traffic management in the city of just over 600,000 residents, officials said.

The government had initiated the CCTV project at the height of fighting the Tamil Tiger rebels, but the actual implementation had taken nearly 20 months after crushing the LTTE.

The Tiger guerrillas who were defeated in May last year had carried out a string of bombing attacks in the capital despite a tight security net.

Even though the LTTE was crushed last year, the government still enforces tight security in Colombo and also maintains a state of emergency which gives sweeping powers to police and troops to arrest suspects and detain them for long periods of time.