HEAD of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr Roger Luncheon, said on Wednesday that government’s intention was to have all 39/40 Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) installations completed, but certain hitches prevented nine sites from becoming functional. At a press conference held at the Office of the President on Shiv Chanderpaul Drive, Georgetown, reporters questioned Dr Luncheon about the usefulness of the CCTV cameras since their establishment.
According to Dr. Luncheon, the hitches had to do with electricity and frequency. He stated: “The cameras are there, poles are installed, but our 60-cycles-per-second cameras and the transmission would not operate optimally in the 50 cycles-per-second neighbourhoods where these poles are located.”
Luncheon said that what the in-service and in-operation cameras in the other sites have provided is surveying both day and night, tracking traffic and activity within the areas that form the capture zone of those cameras.
Responding to a part of the question that queried whether or not information from these cameras proved useful in any specific case, Luncheon said that CCTV provided quality information in the incident in which a vendor was shot dead at Stabroek Market.
He recalled that the information obtained from CCTV footage, from the original scene of the altercation all the way to Stabroek and to the East Bank, provided useful information for the investigation, and the subsequent course of that investigation.
CCTV video surveillance systems are actively monitored by security personnel, and were initiated by the government to assist the Guyana Police Force (GPF) and other national intelligence agencies in crime fighting and basic law enforcement principles.
The intention has always been to decrease the frequency of crime in Guyana, and the initiative was implemented with the protection and safety of Guyanese citizens as its major priority.