PS considers Estok's Intention to Monitor Schools with Cameras to Be Ineffective

Bratislava, September 5 (TASR) - The opposition Progressive Slovakia (PS) party considers Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok's (Voice-SD) plan to monitor schools with cameras to be ineffective, MP Jaroslav Spisiak (PS) told a press conference on Thursday, adding that placing four or five cameras per school won't help in deterring security threats. "It would have an effect if, in the event of such a bomb alert or other similar threat, it could be said using an immediate analysis of the CCTV system and various other technological components that with at least 99-percent probability there couldn't be any explosives or bombs in that school, because it was impossible that somebody had broken in and planted them there. But a camera system costing €20,000 won't provide such a thing," he noted, adding that the money would just be wasted unnecessarily. The party's security and defence expert Peter Bator thinks that the first thing to do is to invest in the management of the situation that has already arisen, in pre-prepared plans and in the training of personnel in schools. The interior minister wants to present at a government meeting a national project of a camera system for primary and secondary schools by the end of September at the latest. The step should preventively assist in the possible emergence of hybrid threats in the future. According to the minister, the camera system should monitor the entrance to the school and inform about suspicious persons on the premises. The total investment is estimated at €60 million, spread gradually over a maximum of three years. am/mcs