Police lay stress on CCTV coverage in migrant settlements of Perumbavoor

The Ernakulam Rural police have asked landowners in Perumbavoor who offer accommodation to migrant labourers to pay extra attention while renting out their properties in a bid to control the persisting law and order issues in the suburban area.

The police, according to sources, are set to instruct landowners to ensure CCTV coverage of their properties housing large number of labourers, besides making it mandatory to ensure that the tenants possess valid identity proofs.

Instructions in this regard will be issued to a sections of landowners who have been called for a meeting with senior police officers on Wednesday. The meeting has been convened as a follow-up action to a multi-pronged strategy adopted by the police to tackle law and order issues in the area, especially at Kandanthara, locally known as ‘Bhai Colony’ due to the large concentration of migrant population, often linked with alleged drug peddling and related crimes.

The District Police Chief (Ernakulam Rural) had last week constituted a committee of stakeholders in a bid to prevent the issues from escalating into a ‘local vs migrants’ crisis after a few such incidents were reported. Widespread raids were also conducted in the dwelling places of migrant labourers in which nine cases under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act were registered in a day.

“Our preliminary assessment is that the recent interventions have had an immediate impact on the ground. However, a detailed review will be conducted only after a few weeks. As part of the ongoing mission to address the long-pending law and order issues there, a meeting of landowners has been called. The key aim of the meet is to sensitise building owners about the legal consequences that they may have to face if crimes take place in their properties,” a senior police officer said.

“We are laying stress on CCTV coverage because several issues in Kandanthara area came to light earlier only because a few building owners had installed cameras on their premises,” an officer said.