News & Notes 733:CCTV System on Auroville roads
CCTV System on Auroville roads
Dear Auroville community,
As you know, our service has the task of ensuring the safety of Auroville’s residents. Our main work is to watch over the main entrances and prevent incidents from happening by filtering the crowd entering Auroville as well as keeping an eye on the main arteries of our city.
Until now, we have only relied on human labour for that purpose. Our Security Guards are present at the main entrances and patrolling the roads of Auroville, noting the plate number of vehicles they don’t know or find suspicious, redirecting the traffic towards the appropriate place (e.g. day visitors to the Visitors Centre), watching over roads for any unwanted activity. They do a tremendous job, take a lot on themselves for the sake of our safety. Without them Auroville wouldn’t be as peaceful as is it. However, with more than 21 entrances and a team of maximum 9 Security Guards during day time our limitations are obvious.
The main option AVSST & Auroville has to improve safety is to limit the number of entrances to Auroville. It’s a conclusion all people who have been involved with the security of Auroville (previous Security team, working groups, police) have concluded as well. Unfortunately, this can only be achieved with patience and a step at a time as we need the necessary land and a lot of diplomacy. Our team is actively working on it but it is not enough.
We are also working on installing a certain number of CCTV cameras on critical accesses to Auroville and main arteries of our city such as Certitude entrance, Visitor Centre checkpost, Dana Checkpost, Gaia crossing, Solar Kitchen roundabout, Kottakarai / Alankuppam linked accesses - Our aim is mostly to cover the entrances and important junctions in order to have a live feed and a record of traffic and movements there.
We are aware not all Aurovilians may see with a good eye the installation of a CCTV system in Auroville. Know that our concern is external traffic and movement. AVSST is not interested and will not watch buildings, parks or communities. External traffic coming in and movement of traffic within Auroville is what interests us.
We also know that CCTV is not a magical tool and that it is not going to stop delinquency from happening, it is one tool among many and should be treated as such. Limitation of CCTV systems have been demonstrated since long by cities who have widely deployed them.
The live footage and recording will be accessible only to designated members/staff of Auroville Safety & Security Team reporting as and when necessary to the Working Committee and Auroville Council.
Recordings will only be reviewed in case of incident, will only be shared with the police according to the protocols which will be established. In no case will footage be used to scrutinize / monitor the behaviour and habits of Aurovilians and no personal requests from Aurovilians or Non-aurovilians to view footage will be accepted.
We will soon organize a general meeting in that regard and on other security points.
With Sincerity,
Auroville Safety & Security Team
(Carlos, Peter, Matthieu, Srijita & Samuel)