Drones, CCTV up security in South Sudan

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South Sudan launched a closed-circuit television (CCTV) and drone security system officials said would help improve safety in Juba where violent crime has spiked on the back of an insurgency.

Kfir Shilder, project manager at Global Group, the Israeli company behind the project, said the surveillance system had 11 cameras installed and two drones. It would eventually be rolled out across the city.
“It will be safe for everybody residing in Juba,” President Salva Kiir said at the system’s launch. “Those who snatch things…in the streets can now be traced they cannot get away from their crime.”

Africa’s youngest nation has been gripped by a four-year civil war pitting forces loyal to Kiir and his former vice president Riek Machar. Fighting killed thousands, displaced hundreds of thousands and battered the economy.

In recent months scores of people were killed in Juba as robbers, some wearing security uniforms, rampage through the town, snatching valuables and attacking homes at night.

Some Juba residents collected cash to pay police unofficially to patrol their neighbourhoods.

Major General Edward Dimitri Lokak, director of government’s Emergency Call Centre & CCTV, said the system would help “improve our work to detect crime and especially crimes committed by those criminals using weapons.”