Nearly 50% of CCTVs at Delhi govt schools defunct; work on to fix issues, say officials

The Public Works Department (PWD) is overseeing the installation and maintenance of CCTV cameras in government schools. Besides the challenge of internet and network issues, dirty lenses have been counted among other factors for unclear footage. A senior PWD official said, “Several schools, especially those located in remote areas or densely populated parts of the city, have been facing internet issues or have no internet at all. Work is in progress to rectify the issues.”

“Also, at present, in many schools the cameras are working at the local level and are monitored by the principal and the Head of the School (HOS). We are connecting all these cameras to the common software which will feed the footage to the monitoring cell — the command control room (CCR),” the official added.

Feed from a total of 38,338 cameras has been attached to the monitoring cell. “The PWD is implementing the project. Due to rain, wiring issues emerged in several schools. We have informed the maintenance and CCR team to rectify the issues soon,” said an official of the Education Department.

The decision to install CCTV cameras in schools came after a seven-year-old student was killed inside the washroom at a Gurgaon school in 2017. The incident had created an uproar across the country, triggering safety concerns among parents.

The Delhi government also took note of criminal incidents taking place inside schools, and came up with the CCTV cameras project in 2019. “The main objective was to cover all schools operated by the Delhi government under CCTV surveillance, curb crime, and provide a safe environment,” said a senior official. It was also proposed to permit the parents to get a live view of the classrooms but they can access such footage only for five minutes per session or class. Around 700 government schools have CCTV cameras, and installation work is ongoing in other schools, said an official.