Three more cameras down

Lawyers say failure to maintain CCTV system makes more insecure.

LAHORE:

Three closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras installed at the Sessions Court have been out of order for a month since a maintenance deal with the company that installed them ran out.

The cameras are installed in the three family courts presided over by judges Syed Naseer Abbas Naqvi, Syed Timsal Zaib Manzoor and Ayeshum Binte Sadiq.

A court official told The Express Tribune that the monitoring cell of the Sessions Court had informed the authorities about the condition of the cameras, but the situation remained unchanged. No step had been taken to reach a new contract with the company, called Proline, or another repair company.

Crimes within courtrooms are not uncommon and there have been several gruesome incidents at the city’s courts this year, including murder and assaults against lawyers, judges and litigants. Several lawyers, talking to The Express Tribune, said that the broken cameras added to the general sense of insecurity at the courts.

Asked to comment on the matter, District and Sessions Judge Mujahid Mustaqeem Ahmed said that he was unaware that three cameras were out of order, thanked this correspondent for informing him, and pledged to address the issue quickly. He said there was no shortage of funds to get them fixed.

Muhammad Ijaz, the operations manager at Proline, said that the company had offered one year of free maintenance upon installation of the cameras, but that deal had run out.

“We actually did some maintenance work for free a couple of months after the contract ended,” he said. “Now they need to sign a new contract. We can’t keep working for free.”

The courts have had a lot of trouble maintaining their CCTV cameras. Earlier this year, the security cameras crashed after the UPS they ran on fused, as nearby lawyers offices were piggybacking on the system to run their fans during power outages.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 3^rd, 2011.