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Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Police are set to open a Closed Circuit Television-CCTV National Archive Centre in Kampala. According to Police’s Chief Political Commissar Asan Kasingye, the archive centre, whose construction work is at 60 per cent will also serve as the national CCTV monitoring centre.
Kasingye says that the storied building will have officers monitoring all CCTV security cameras installed in Kampala City and other major towns like Masaka, Mbarara, Mbale, Gulu, Arua and Fort portal. He adds that the monitoring centre that was opened by President Yoweri Museveni, last year, will be retained as the control unit for the Kampala Metropolitan Policing Area.
Kasingye elaborated that currently footage captured by CCTV cameras already installed in different parts of Kampala City is stored and released by archive centres that were set up during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in 2007.
“National CCTV control centre will have a national archive. If something took place in Rubaga and it happened last year, you will not go to Nateete. You will go to the CCTV National Archive Centre. It will also serve as the overall CCTV Forensic Centre,” Kasingye said.
Police believe that all works on storied national archive centre will be completed by mid-November ahead of its opening planned for December.
“Here we shall be monitoring all CCTV cameras, recording and archiving visuals that may be necessary for legal purposes. We are going to monitor whatever is happening in Kampala Metropolitan, major towns and highways. If something happens, you go assess or study the visual particularly to establish who was involved,” Kasingye said.
He added that the completion of the first phase of CCTV targeting Kampala City, Entebbe sub-district, Wakiso and Mukono district is at 80 per cent. So far monitoring units have been set up in Nateete, Kawempe, Wakiso and Mukono. The installed cameras purposely cover activities on streets, expressways and other major roads with KMP.
Last month, Police Spokesperson Fred Enanga told journalists that 2,547 cameras had already been installed out of 3,233 planned for Kampala Metropolitan Police.
Enanga added that sites, where CCTVs had been installed, were 1,038 out of 1,248, whereas 1,565 out 2,547 installed cameras online. Police said trenching had reached 1,083km out of 1,258km in addition to 11 out of 18 monitoring rooms had been set up as well fibre cable laying that had covered 1,000 km out of 1,258km.
“There is going to be a second phase for major towns Jinja, Mbarara, Mbale, Soroti, Fort Portal, Arua and Masaka. Each of them is going to have its own control centre. Nateete cannot monitor Masaka,” Kasingye said.
The third phase will be highways like Gulu, Hoima and Fort portal. Both regional, divisional and national monitoring centres will have people operating them 24 hours, seven days. These, according to Kasingye, will be liaising with foot and patrol officers.
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