Taxpayers will spend another Sh1 billion to run the national surveillance system built by Safaricom to offer security in Nairobi and Mombasa cities. FILE PHOTO | NMG Taxpayers will spend another Sh1 billion to run the national surveillance system built by Safaricom to offer security in Nairobi and Mombasa cities.
Treasury budget documents show that this is the same amount the government is spending on the system in the current financial year
Safaricom handed over the national surveillance system to the government in 2015 after the completion of the project in Nairobi and Mombasa.
At the handover, the telecoms operator said the government would use the infrastructure at no cost for the first year as a way of ensuring that the company has provided a working solution. Police stations
The government will thereafter start paying for it annually, with Safaricom continuing to offer support through a managed service deal.
The Sh14.9 billion National Surveillance, Communication and Control System links all security agencies, making it easy to share information and direct operations.
The project involved connecting 195 police stations in Nairobi and Mombasa to high-speed (4G) Internet to ease communication. The first phase of the surveillance system went live in May 2015.
Safaricom installed tamper-proof, high definition and ultra-high definition CCTV cameras in Mombasa and Nairobi that are connected to a national command and control room.
Nairobi and Mombasa were at the time the hardest hit by terrorism. A rollout of the project throughout the country would cost Sh21 billion.
The system has analytical capabilities allowing for facial and movement recognition from the CCTV footage relayed to the command and control centre in real time.
Additionally, police have been equipped with walkie-talkies with cameras to take pictures at crime scenes for assessment and evidence. The pictures can be sent in real time to the command and control centre.The walkie-talkies have tracking capabilities to improve disaster response. This is expected to make it easy to locate police officers closest to a crime scene for faster response. Traffic flow The system enables security personnel to monitor areas under surveillance, detect any security incident, and help direct police response and monitor the flow of people and traffic, especially in town centres. The system also has a command and control redundancy centre that is capable of coordinating an emergency response. emutai@ke.nationmedia.com
