Chennai: With just a couple of days to go for Deepavali, people are thronging the busy commercial hubs in the city for making purchases to celebrate the festival. Places like T Nagar, Tambaram Parrys, Purasawalkkam see huge crowd.
Vehicular traffic is thrown out of gear in several commercial areas. It is a sea of humanity in the major business centres in the city. A large number of temporary platform shops too have come up selling textiles, readymade garments, household utensils and even electronic gadgets. At few places, the haphazard parking of both cars and two-wheelers is creating traffic bottlenecks.
Like every year, this time too, the personnel of Mambalam R1 Police Station attached to T Nagar, have brought about various measures under the directives of the Commissioner of Police, to set up a safe shopping experience for the public, by preventing thefts.
Speaking on this, a senior official of the station said, “Two control rooms and five watch towers will be on use to monitor the moving crowd on busy stretches like Ranganathan Street, Usman Road and Duraiswamy Road. In addition to the CCTV cameras present, more devices will be installed at nooks and corners of these shopping points to ensure maximum surveillance.”
The locality of T Nagar has already taken effective steps in CCTV installation, with over 1200 cameras now in action at various streets and establishments- all of which will be useful during the festive season, it was informed.
About the deployment of police, the official replied, “Over 500 personnel, both in uniform and plainclothes will be on duty. The services of home guards too will be sought upon requirement.”
Women police in large contingents will also be on deployed in these areas to safeguard female shoppers, he noted. Last year, a new initiative named Face Track was introduced, which proved to be highly effective in identifying and tracing the notorious quickly.
Face Track will contain images of noted criminals and wherever they are spotted, the image will be identified on the spot with the device by the personnel on duty, he explained.
Apart from this, few other arrangements like mike announcement booths will be opened to caution the shoppers when the crowd is heavy.