Until last month, Teachers Colony residents, especially women, used to dread walking along the Funtimes road or the Sai Baba temple road for fear of chain-snatchers.
“Chain snatchings used to be a regular feature here. It was getting tough to cope with,” says Koneru Narendra Babu, president of the Teachers Colony Residents Association.
There are 125 houses in Teachers Colony. The majority of the people living here are senior citizens.
After much deliberation, the local residents’ association decided to install surveillance cameras in the colony.
They installed 32 closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras at vantage points in the locality.
The then City Police Commissioner A.B. Venkateswara Rao, whose policy it was to encourage localities to set up their own security systems, came by to inaugurate it in July.
Today the streets are safer. Since the CCTV cameras were installed, not a single chain-snatching has occurred in the colony.
Residents now take their morning and evening walks without fear, says P. Rajendra Prasad, founder secretary of the association.
The whole security system cost the association Rs 6 lakh. It has 32 cameras, one TV monitor, an air-conditioner, a network video recorder and a control room set up in the community hall.
It required 3 km of optical cables to cover the four streets in the colony. The CCTV system stores 10 days’ video footage. To tide over power cuts, there is a solar inverter.
The monthly power bill comes to Rs. 7000, quite a sum but the association is now working on installing solar panels to reduce the power bill, explained K. Sudhakar, a resident of Teachers Colony.
Learning from the Teachers Colony example, neighbouring colonies such as RTC Colony, Guru Nanak Colony and Vasavi Colony are installing CCTV camera systems in their locality too.
