CCTV surveillance at Central, Egmore

R Baskaran, Principal Chief Signal and Telecommunication Engineer of SR launched the service built over the railways’ fibre network. The system is designed to have a scalable, secured network for better crowd management and have high bandwidth to have data collection, recording and retrieval, a statement from SR said.

The surveillance facility comprising 10 and 8 cameras at Central and Egmore stations, respectively, with facility to record and store footage for over 30 days would also help in curtailing tout activities. The servers, storage and monitoring arrangements will be in the Passenger Reservation Counters (PRS) premises under the custody of Chief Reservation Supervisor (CRS), the statement added.

Among the busiest counters of railways, Dr MGR Chennai Central and Chennai Egmore record an average of 2,682 and 1,020 ticket bookings per day and around 9,65,520 and 3,67,200 tickets annually. Southern Railways has now provided CCTV Surveillance system for the passenger reservation counters at eight A1 category and one A category station.

Apart from Central and Egmore stations, Madurai, Coimbatore and Tiruchy in Tamil Nadu, and Ernakulum, Kozhikode, Thrissur and Thiruvananthapuram stations in Kerala also have CCTV surveillance.

The work is executed by Signal and Telecom wing of SR. Works are in progress in 34 more passenger reservation counters in SR zone, including Chennai Beach, Tambaram, Mambalam, St Thomas Mount, Perambur, Avadi, Mylapore and Chengalpattu stations.