It’s a far cry from London’s 400,000, Jakarta Provincial Government will get a little “bigger brother-y” next month with the installation of 500 new CCTV surveillance cameras throughout intersections in the capital that will catch car criminals in the act as well as help monitor the mounting macet in the city.
Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama said the cameras will be installed in February and that they would have the ability to identify cars by their license plates.
Of the many benefits the cameras could bring, Ahok said one was that husbands could no longer lie to their wives about where they were.
“Sometimes they have their iPhones turned off, so you can’t track their position. But soon there’ll be so many CCTV. So if a man lies to his wife saying, ‘I’m on Jalan Sudirman again.’ his wife can ask, ‘Oh yeah, where on Sudirman?’” Ahok joked on Jalan Sabang yesterday, as quoted by MetroTV.
Ahok said the surveillance cameras would be paid for by the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system, which will require cars driving through certain roads to electronically pay a fee each time they pass through certain gateways. The CCTV cameras will then be able to identify cars violating the system so they can be fined later.
