Sri Lanka continues to maintain a close watch on possible terrorist related and other illegal and criminal activities on the country's coastal line.

Accordingly the Government has hired a Chennai-based firm to strengthen its surveillance network. Barnas International of India agreed to provide surveillance solutions to the Sri Lankan capital, will also take up similar projects in the northern regions that had recently been liberated from the LTTE.

Indian media reports said that under the project, the entire Sri Lankan coast will come under a specially- designed surveillance system with sophisticated thermal-imaging cameras and a software that can detect the nature of the moving object.

"Thermal-imaging cameras, unlike conventional ones, are so powerful that they can pick up images from distances nearly 20 km into the sea. Specially-designed software will analyze the nature of the images and sound out an alarm in the central control centre when a boat or ship approaches the coast," said Barnas vice-president, Sivaji Rao.

He said the Sri Lankan government had realized the difficulty of monitoring the entire coast manually and gone in for an unmanned surveillance system.

"Apart from providing coastal security, all sensitive areas will be brought under strict surveillance under the project. We are not using conventional cameras and digital video recorders here but are using highly sophisticated and specially-designed equipment and software. All the cameras involved will be internet-enabled and can be monitored by senior officials even when they are on the move through cell phones and laptops," he further said.