Gauteng VumaCam partnership yield fruits in crime fighting
Local media houses and journalists were recently invited to the Interim Command Centre located in the Johannesburg inner-city, by the Gauteng e-Government department to assess the CCTV installed around the province.
The operation centre is a state-of-the-art network control room, where Local Law Enforcement officials are hard at work utilizing innovative surveillance technology that has become central to Gauteng’s crime prevention efforts.
Using over 6469 live CCTV cameras installed across major hotspots in the province’s metros, the partnership has done it’s part to combat crime.
Over 476 interceptions were made leading to 104 arrests, 264 vehicle impoundments in a hundred day period.
Working in partnership with local security, police and private clients, VumaCam works alongside Gauteng government to monitor any activity of interest that may lead to any offence. From there, nearby law enforcement (can be security or police) get an alert to monitor the situation and be on standby for any escalations.
These cameras are also built to last, positioned as high as possible to monitor from all angles and stand clear from vandalism.
Gauteng e-Goverent MEC Bonginkosi Dhlamini praised the partnership for its results in crime fighting in the province. He also reflected on his 100 days in office during the media tour.
“This department was selected to provide technologically-innvoative ideas that will assist law enforcement to deal with the scourge of crime. We are very delighted today to see this investment in the VumaCam CCTV camera technology contributing to the arresting of criminals,” he said.
He admitted that crime is still a major problem that plagues communities across the province. They deployed other innovative initiatives like panic buttons, e-policing, drones, name-plate recognition cameras in crime hotspots in the province.
“This is work in progress and we constantly monitor ourselves to see if we achieve our intended results of a safer and smarter province,” Dhlamini said.
VumaCam’s Michael Varney delivered a detailed presentation about the progress made from the public private partnership.
“From a VumaCam perspective we clearly know what our objective in terms of densifying a mational network (of CCTVs) across the country so that will help eradicate crime,” he explained.
Varney pointed that about 1000 cameras will be installed in the next year.
He said South Africa has about 11 million CCTV cameras that are turned on everyday and only a percent are monitored.
“Of the ones that are a monitored there are huge amounts of false alerts. The analytics picks up a vehicle that shouldn’t be going in the wrong direction, for example, is it worth wasting resources and dispatching a resources?”
VumaCam filters the false alerts and then gives the alerts of interest to the Gauteng interim command centre to deploy law enforcement.
HOD for Gauteng e-Goverent department, Castro Mosina commented on the strengthening of the partnership between media and government to share the progress made in the installation of new cameras across new areas like townships, hostels and informal settlements.
Article first published on Mapepeza Newspaper Vol. 11 Issue 15 (1-8 November 2024)