Force to send team to China and learn about installing camera system, and upgrade command centre.

The Fiji Police Force will send a team to China soon to work with a Chinese company and learn about installing Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras around the country.

Police Commissioner Brigadier-General Sitiveni Qiliho said he had discussions with a company during his recent visit to China and talked about setting up a command centre here to properly monitor issues like crime.

He said they were looking at setting up locations in key Police stations, starting with Suva.

“The aim is to have the CCTV around the country, depending on the analysis that we will take that will see the suitability of the systems going in,” Brigadier-General Sitiveni Qiliho said.

“In some cases, some of the municipalities have already put in cameras. It is about intergrating this system into a proper command centre that can have effective monitoring.

“That is what we are looking at and we look up to the Chinese company to assist us with in how we get the hardware set up for the command centre depending on the needs, which will determine the size of the command centre and where that goes in.”

He said having the cameras, if they have to enhance it with high definition camera, then they would look into it as well.

Police also plans to get a proper cloud system going that can intergrade all these things with all the cameras that are in place, the Global Positioning System (GPS) that we have in our vehicles and working with the Land Transport Authority (LTA) for the cameras they have in place.

“This will help the command centre properly monitor and act decisively on issues that can prevent crimes from happening,” Brigadier-General Qiliho said.

“We do not have any allocated budget for it. We are looking at or service projected savings that we have in this year’s budget and we have to do a proper study of it and make the necessary submissions to the Ministry of Economy.

“Otherwise, we are looking at funding from operations budgeted to help us get the command centre running.

“It’s about getting an effective running command centre which needs to be more in professional input from the service providers.” Edited by Naisa Koroi

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