Tracker and Vumacam partner to make your neighbourhood safer

Taking care of you and your loved ones no matter where you go

Tracker’s brand promise “To care is to protect” has been brought to life through its recent partnership with Vumacam.

One of Tracker’s primary goals is to make South Africa a safer place for its citizens. Vumacam shares this objective and the resulting partnership is rolling out a CCTV platform that transforms how security and communities work together.

CCTV monitoring is nothing new to South African suburbs and in the past, has generally been put up by resident associations, security companies and even schools, all of which are however in disparate and unconnected geographical communities. Despite these communities being proactive, the downside is that they do not speak to each other nor do they share the acquired information. Footage is also often grainy and unusable due to inconsistent non-fibre network connections. Another challenge is that most of these systems do not have a failsafe for power outages nor are they monitored to provide alert notifications when they are not functioning, which means an outage is often only realised too late when trying to retrieve footage after an incident.

The partnership between Vumacam (a JV between Vumatel and Imfezeko Holdings) and Tracker aims to help solve as many of these issues as possible, delivering on the need to introduce public space CCTV surveillance as an effective tool to address crime, contribute to safer communities and bring neighbourhoods together. The cameras have Licence Plate Recognition (LPR) functionality which ensures that every passing vehicle is checked against multiple databases, which include stolen vehicles, forged plates and perpetrators on the run which have been listed by SAPS. Suspicious vehicles in and out of suburbs can be monitored across the network of cameras by security professionals from a centralised system. While monitoring the feed, they can also overlay analytics.

The issue of privacy, especially in relation to the forthcoming release of the POPI Act is most certainly a debate that can’t be ignored. The Protection of Personal Information Act governs the policy and principles of privacy and the processing of personal information and the solution has been built to ensure that all concerns are respected and that it is compliant with the necessary laws and legislations. The feed is only available to vetted security companies who enter into a contract with Vumacam. Members of the public will not have access to the recordings unless they follow the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA).

“Tracker has a connected strategy and these connected networks will help drive smarter and closer collaboration between communities. Add to that the power of independent security companies from different areas who already work tirelessly to secure the streets where South Africans live, work and play and you have a winning solution,” says Michael Du Preez, Executive: Product and Marketing at Tracker. Du Preez goes on to say, “This partnership will add a significant layer of security to neighbourhoods and the city which is something we’re really excited about.”

Although the primary focus of the partnership at this stage is to make communities safer, there is a definite need for cities to become smarter and more efficient and in the future, this is precisely the type of service this partnership aims to deliver.