National CCTV command centre connected to power grid
Installation. Umeme technicians set up the Shs17.65m transformer which will serve the National Closed-Circuit Television Command and Control Centre in Naguru, Kampala, on Thursday. PHOTO BY DESIRE MBABAALI
What you need to know:
- Many of the sites are in the Kampala Metropolitan area, covering Kampala, Mukono, Entebbe and Wakiso districts.
During this first phase, the police will install 3,233 cameras.
Uganda Police Force has commissioned a Shs17.65m transformer to serve the National Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) Command and Control Centre in Naguru, Kampala.
The 800 kilo volt amps (KVA) power modifier’s output is 60 per cent more than the transformer currently serving the Naguru-based police headquarters.
With the equipment, the production of real time CCTV footage and its processing will be improved.
“The centre is a critical installation; that is why Umeme had to connect it for its operational efficiency,” Mr Davis Egesa, the Umeme large power users engineer, said on Thursday.
Mr Egesa said even though police headquarters already has a 500KVA transformer, the CCTV Command Centre needed its own bigger transformer because CCTV requires stable power supply.
The national CCTV centre is currently operating from Nateete Police Station as Huawei Technologies Uganda technicians complete work on the Naguru station.
The decision to install CCTV cameras in major towns, starting with the Kampala Metropolitan area and highways in Uganda is traceable to a 2013 directive by President Museveni.
The late Gen Aronda Nyakairima, who was the Internal Affairs minister, in 2013 said Mr Museveni had ordered the installation of CCTV cameras because their footage would ease the identification and arrest of suspected criminals.
The President’s directive came on the back of bombings in the United States of America (US) and the US’s reliance on CCTV footage to apprehend the suspects.
It was only in 2018, five years later though, after Uganda’s Parliament passed a Shs60b supplementary budget that the police, through China’s Huawei Technologies, started installing the cameras.
According to a July 1, 2019 statement by the Uganda Police Force, 2, 547 CCTV cameras have so far been installed in 83 per cent of the sites identified for the first phase.
Many of the sites are in the Kampala Metropolitan area, covering Kampala, Mukono, Entebbe and Wakiso districts.
During this first phase, the police will install 3,233 cameras.
