Bangkok governor says no fishy deal
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Bangkok Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra insisted Wednesday that there were no irregularities behind the installation of dummy security cameras on Bangkok's streets.
Sukhumbhand told a press conference that the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration had used the same principle as the City of London in installing dummy security cameras to discourage criminals from committing crimes.
Sukhumbhand denied allegations posted on the Pantip.com web-board that there was something fishy in the project to install security cameras on Bangkok streets as several of the cameras were in fact fakes.
Sukhhumbhand said the cameras were not fakes but dummies and this was clearly stated in the purchasing contracts.
The governor said the city administration had installed security cameras in two batches following the explosions in the night of New Year's Eve 2006.
The first batch of security cameras was purchased under a Bt330 million budget from December 2007. The first batch contained 2,046 security cameras and 1,325 dummy cameras. Most of the dummy cameras have now been removed, with only 500 remaining, Sukhumbhand said.
He said the city administration decided to install dummy cameras along with the real ones because the dummy cameras were much cheaper.
He said the security cameras' prices ranged from Bt34,000 to Bt130,000 each while the dummy cameras ranged from Bt2,500 to Bt2,700.
He said he has learned that England has installed up to 50,000 dummy cameras to discourage crime.
Sukhumbhand said the city administration has purchased the second lot of 20,000 security cameras and 10,000 of them were installed in June.
The governor said he instructed the City clerk to set up a committee to review the purchases of the security cameras to see whether there were irregularities in the purchases.
He said he would also ask the Public Sector Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate the security camera purchases.
