Littering Imphal with decorative pieces : Hail the Govt for outdoing itself
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: June 12 , 2014 -

A CCTV camera installed at a vantage point in Imphal city, which has gone kaput :: Pix - TSE

The State Government has outdone itself again and congratulations should be in line !

How do you decorate a city ? Simple, just instal traffic lights that do not work as well as CCTV cameras that conk out from day one.

Something like turning a circle into a square by renaming Connaught Circle to Rajiv Square, to quote the highly erudite TVR Shenoy who made this observation decades back in The Week.

To the keen readers, the report which came under the headline ‘State Government overlooks Annual Maintenance Contract’, the story would surely be disgusting as well as comical.

On the other hand it is not so surprising as the present dispensation has mastered the knack of coming out with such master strokes one after the other.

In 2011, in the name of making security agencies more efficient in checking crimes and violence in Imphal, 100 CCTV cameras were installed at the Raj Bhawan, the Chief Minister’s office cum bungalow as well as at some vantage point in Imphal at a whopping amount of Rs 8 crore.

The stench of the process of awarding contract/supply works must have blinded the Government so much so that they ‘forgot’ to insert the Annual Maintenance Contract clause in the agreement inked with the firm which supplied and installed the said CCTVs.

What is more, the Government also conveniently forgot that the CCTVs need energy to run and in the face of the pathetic power supply situation here, the CCTVs became nothing more than decorative pieces, much like the traffic lights that were also installed at a huge cost.

Now the State Government seems to have woken up to the reality and in one swift decision has constituted a committee to take stock of the situation and see how the CCTVs can be kicked back into life again.

Better late than never, is the credo of the Government it seems.

Moreover now that they have come to the realisation that Imphal (forget the other places) receives power supply for only a few hours in a day, the Government is toying with the idea of utilising solar panel to power the CCTVs.

There is also no record of handing/taking over of the project after the CCTVs were installed. This is not how a State should be governed. This is not how things should be run.

Obviously no heads will roll for the fiasco, for all the top men, from the political leaders to the suited, booted officials were in one way or the other involved in the process of granting the contract/supply work and in ‘forgetting’ to insert the Annual Maintenance Clause in the project.

So despite the poor fiscal condition, the State Government is going to spend another handsome amount, just because it could not look beyond the process of awarding contract works and floating tenders.

This at a time when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has more than made it clear that all States have a responsibility in fiscal management.

With reports coming in that most of the batteries and other accessories of the CCTVs have been found stolen by petty thieves, it would be wise to instal the battery and other components at the top of the CCTV pillars.

This may entail strengthening the pillars but nothing should be left to chance. Manipur cannot afford to have costly, state of the art technology as decorative pieces.

Hard to digest that such a fundamental point blew over the heads of the people entrusted with the task of looking after the affairs of the people and the State.

The CCTV cameras were installed for the security of the people including the VVIPs and if something as fundamental as Annual Maintenance Contract could be overlooked then the sincerity of the Government to assist the security agencies in checking crimes is suspect.

It may sound blasphemous, but it may not altogether be wrong if one were to conclude that the primary objective of installing the CCTVs was not to assist the security agencies, but to dip their fingers in the pie of contract and supply works.