Villages in Laguna go gaga over CCTVs

A number of villages in the small town of Alaminos in Laguna took the initiative of setting up security cameras to fight crimes.

The remote village of Sta. Rosa, located almost on the boundary of Laguna and Lipa City in Batangas, had just finished installing eight closed-circuit television cameras (CCTVs) in strategic locations near a church, school and streets over the weekend, its village chief, Ernesto Sahagun, said.

“The cameras will serve as deterrent to criminals and drug users, which are main problems in our barangay,” Sahagun said in a phone interview on Monday.

He said by January, the village would set up three to four more CCTV units to cover vital areas in the entire community. The village had spent P150,000 of its own funds for the eight cameras.

“We are only a small village with very meager funding. But it just needed (financial) management,” he said.

Motivated by Sta. Rosa’s project, two other villages—Barangay San Andres and Barangay 3—were next to set up CCTVs in their areas.

“The thing with CCTVs is being able to get footage of what really happened. For instance with traffic altercations, we’d be able to see what or who was at fault,” said Senior Insp. Mederic Villarete, the town’s police chief.