Taking a serious note of the rise in criminal activities on the 200-acre campus of the Government Medical Colllege in Kottayam, a meeting convened by District Collector P.K.Sudheer Babu has decided to strengthen the hospital's security apparatus.
As part of it, a network of 40 CCTV cameras will be installed on the campus besides deploying more personnel at the police aid post here. A decision with regard to intensifying police patrolling round the clock has also been made.
“Aimed to check the movement of outsiders on the hospital campus, a special drive will be launched to evict illegal traders and their merchandise on the hospital premises. Regulations on parking of vehicles will be imposed while stern action will be initiated on outsiders parking their vehicles,” said an official
Similarly, no person except patients and their relatives will be permitted to move around the campus. The practice of buses boarding and deboarding passengers in front of the hospital's main entry will be regulated.
The decisions have been made at the meeting, attended by Superintendent T.K.Jayakumar, Principal Jose Joseph and Additional Superintendent of Police A. Nisam.
Two weeks ago, the Gandhinagar police approached the hospital authorities seeking to establish a CCTV camera network in locations covering hospitals wards to improve round-the-clock surveillance.
The Police Department also sought to keep the hospital campus free of lottery vendors and outsiders at night, besides collecting details of people who roam around the campus in a suspicious manner.
Woman killed
In the absence of a proper security mechanism, the hospital campus has become a safe haven for drug dealers and anti-social elements. Recently, the police had recovered a partially decomposed, half-burnt body of a middle-aged woman from the waste dumping area near the cancer ward here.
Further investigations revealed that the woman was killed by her friend, a retail lottery vendor, during their stay inside a vacant area of the hospital.
