The police CCTV system in known hot spots is mostly up and running, Police Commissioner Michael DeSilva said today.

Mr De Silva added that contractors had restored service to many areas with a special focus on trouble spots.

He said: “That work is now substantially complete with a handful of cameras left to install over the next few days.”

Mr DeSilva added that “coverage is resuming” in Friswell’s Hill, St Monica’s Road, Parsons Road, North and South roundabout, Barnes Corner and at the Paget traffic lights.

And he said: “Part of this system restoration includes 15 locations covered throughout the City of Hamilton, with cameras spread across the north, south, east and west quadrants.”

He noted that overseas technicians had now been cleared to work in Bermuda and were expected to arrive to install the hi-tech wireless network for the new system by the end of the month.

Mr DeSilva said that once the back-up work had been completed, the full complement of 150 cameras across the Island could be installed.

“While these developments do not represent the full CCTV project, and there is still much work to be done, there is definitely some comfort in returning to a similar level of coverage.

“We will look forward to further expansion of our capacity in the days and weeks ahead.”

The new system, run by BAS-Serco, was due to be up and running at the start of this month when an older network was taken out of service.

The new network will have double the number of cameras, linked to a central control room wirelessly and will include facial recognition and automatic number plate recognition.