Mangaluru : Deputy Commissioner A.B. Ibrahim on Monday directed petrol outlets, religious institutions and cinema halls in the district to install closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras on their premises by December 31 to beef up security and maintain law and order.

At a district-level meeting to review the coverage of CCTV cameras, officials told Mr. Ibrahim that only 76 of the 147 petrol outlets had so far installed CCTV cameras. Mr. Ibrahim asked oil companies to instruct outlet operators to install them by December 31.

Mr. Ibrahim said the cameras needed to be installed at religious places, bus stops, railway stations, malls, government offices, schools and in Old bunder area too. Superintendent of Police Sharanappa S.D. said the CCTV cameras which were being installed should be of good quality and should have the facility to store recordings for a few weeks. An official from Muzarai Department said CCTV cameras had been installed at all the 44 ‘A’ grade temples; 23 of the 25 ‘B’ grade temples and 162 of the 427 C’ grade temples.

An official from the Wakf Department said there were 605 mosques in the district but he was not sure how many of them had installed CCTV cameras.

Mr. Ibrahim directed the official to get authentic information at the earliest. He asked all the religious institutions to submit a compliance report within 15 days. Deputy Director of Public Instruction Walter D’Mello said that 620 of the 1,975 schools in the district had so far installed CCTV cameras. District Social Welfare Officer Santosh Kumar said that they had been installed in eight Morarji Desai residential schools and 117 hostels for backward classes, tribal persons and other communities run by the department.

Another official said that 40 of the 53 first grade government colleges had CCTV cameras.