Police officers to stay longer on roads
Police officers will continue to control traffic on city roads as mounted surveillance cameras at various strategic spots are yet to start working.
According to the traffic department, the cameras are being tested, even as other components of the integrated urban surveillance system are finalised.
“To the best of my knowledge they are yet to be fully operational and are still being tested until the central control room is fully set up,” said Nairobi Traffic Commander, Edward Mwamburi.
The cameras, mounted late last year to check the city’s runaway insecurity and traffic violations, were to replace the 300 traffic officers manning city roads.
Ideally, trained traffic marshals from the county government would have taken over last month. Police officers were to be deployed to investigate traffic law violators, according to the joint plan by the County Government and the Traffic department.
Still optimistic
The county government, however, is still optimistic that all will materialise sooner than later, adding that the project was on the home stretch.
“By Friday, after consultation with the project’s engineer we might be in a position to give a date when the whole system would be fully operational,” said Videlis Mwanza, the county public relations officer.
Mr Mwanza added that the County was awaiting the outcome of a court case before replacing vandalised lights and cameras at the University Way-Uhuru Highway roundabout.
The traffic lights and cameras were destroyed after students rioted last month.
When fully operational the cameras are to relay real time images to a central control room, which will in turn be synchronised with the Kenya Revenue Authority database to assist in identification of errant motorists.
The World Bank financed the training of the county government traffic marshals.