VELLORE: Minister for Water Resources Durai Murugan on Friday inaugurated a traffic control room at the new Corporation office complex.
Set up by the Vellore City Municipal Corporation (VCMC), under the Smart City Project, the room will be temporarily used by the police department to monitor traffic movement. It will also respond to traffic-related issues, and check violations.
Superintendent of Police S Rajesh Kannan told reporters, "Traffic police will be monitoring the control room round-the-clock. In case of an issue, police will communicate with their counterparts on the field to attend to the situation." A separate police control room is also being set up at the district police office and is expected to be completed in 45 days, the SP said.
At the ceremony, the minister said, "The public should wear a helmet for safety and not to use mobile phones while driving." Under the Smart City project, over 500 CCTV cameras have been installed in the city. But there are plans to install 500 more CCTVs under the project. Apart from this, the police department will be installing 500 CCTV cameras. The installation of CCTVs is to provide safety and security for the public, Rajesh Kannan said.
Around 12 high-resolution Automatic Number Plate recognition (ANPR) cameras were installed to identify motorists violating traffic rules. Also, 18 facial recognition cameras have been installed at important junctions, so far.
The SP added, "The pictures of history-sheeters were fed into the system and these facial recognition cameras will identify them when they are spotted within camera range, which will help us act quickly in case of an offence being committed."
Collector P Kumaravel Pandian, Vellore MP DM Kathir Anand, VCMC Mayor Sujatha Anandakumar were present.