Parents of students in Delhi government schools will have real-time access to CCTV footage of their child’s classrooms on their mobile phones, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said.
Arvind Kejriwal said on Wednesday that the monitoring system would “make the whole system transparent and accountable and ensure safety of kids”.
The move comes amid security fears after a seven-year-old boy was found murdered in a school bathroom in Gurgaon, 20 miles from the Indian capital, in September last year.
The plan to install the cameras was initiated in September 2015 but the addition of real-time monitoring was made public this week. The cameras will be in all the region’s approximately 1,000 schools within three months.
“It’s a good thing. We have to know what our children are doing there all day,” said Uma Thakur, whose daughter, five, is in year 2. “There are rape cases, murders. These things are happening in schools everywhere. Every parent is worried.”
Parents of the children told they can see whether the teachers are teaching the students or busy doing their own personal work.
However, others had privacy fears and pointed to inconclusive evidence that CCTV reduces crime.
The Delhi administration ran for office on a campaign to increase safety in the region in part by installing thousands of CCTV cameras in public spaces and on buses, but has made little progress so far.
Delhi’s education minister, Manish Sisodia, has said the system would also help the government to investigate claims of teacher misconduct or absenteeism.
> Shiuly Akter
