KUALA LUMPUR:Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) will install more than 100 closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras around the Kuala Lumpur Wholesale Market in Selayang here in a bid to step up enforcement and curb the activities of illegal immigrants carrying out businesses in the area.

Federal Territories Minister Tan Sri Annuar Musa said the CCTVs, to be equipped with Artificial Intelligence features with facial recognition technology, would enable work to monitor and control activities inside and outside the wholesale market to be carried out more orderly.

“We still find some traders, involving illegal immigrants, carrying businesses outside the wholesale market’s fence and along the walkways, which then affects traffic flow in the area.

“The CCTVs will be installed inside and outside the market for enforcement monitoring by DBKL… we will upgrade it from time to time,” he told reporters at the Mural and Graffiti Competition prize-presentation ceremony at the wholesale market today.

Annuar also said that the construction of the hostel facility with over 200 beds for the wholesale market workers was fully completed and set to be used from next month.

“We will consult with the licensees (market traders) to distribute the quota among the workers who need this facility either due to not having a place to stay or having to currently pay a high rental,” he said.

He said the rental for the facility would be as low as RM150 per month and that apart from making it easier for the workers to commute to work, it would also attract more local workers, including from outside the capital.

Earlier, Annuar spent almost an hour surveying the transformation of the wholesale market, which is now more comfortable, cleaner, brighter and free of foreign workers following improvements in terms of management and governance.

Among the upgrades are the addition of control room workstations, passes using QR code scans for wholesalers and their workers, fences and motorcycle parking areas.

-- BERNAMA