October 2003: Thirty cameras, costing $2 million, put up at Boat Quay, Newton Hawker Centre and Little India to bring down the crime rate in these hot spots.

October 2004: Closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras installed at MRT platforms can now record events. Previously, staff could only view events at a station. Also, 168 cameras would be added by May 2005 to boost security.

November 2004: The Government announced that every school would be fitted with up to 12 cameras each and patrolled by security guards within the next few months. The cameras were to cost the Government $4 million.
More cameras were also installed at unspecified public areas and streets to beef up security against terrorism.

November 2005: Fourteen town councils announced they were working with police to put up about 600 cameras by the next year to monitor areas such as void decks and carparks. The cameras, costing about $1 million, were to be placed at locations prone to crime such as vandalism and theft.

June 2006: A few hundred CCTV cameras were to be fitted on selected public buses and MRT trains along the North-South and East-West lines. This was done to boost security on public transport. The Land Transport Authority said then that it would decide whether to install them on the entire system at a future date.

September 2006: SBS Transit started introducing CCTVs in its buses to help monitor fare evasion, molestation and other crimes.

It now has more than 3,000 cameras in its fleet of buses.

October 2006: There were more than 60 cameras in more public locations, including Geylang and the vicinity of Suntec City and the Esplanade.

February 2007: Security cameras were to be fitted on every train and at every MRT station to keep an eye out for terrorists on Singapore's transport network.
Each train carriage would have two of these closed-circuit cameras - or a dozen for each train.

January 2008: Police said they planned to add 223 more cameras to the streets, without saying where and when these would be up. That would bring the number up to almost 350 cameras islandwide.

August 2008: The Government announced plans to pump in $29million into more CCTV cameras in all MRT stations to beef up commuter safety.

This story was first published in The Straits Times on 29 September 2008.

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