Security and surveillance beefed up on campuses

FUZHOU - More security guards are to be trained and more high-tech facilities will be used in schools in Southeast China's Fujian province to better protect students.

These measures are in response to last year's killing spree in Nanping city where a man stabbed eight primary school students to death and injured five others.

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"More than 500 guards were trained last year after the tragedy and we plan to train more this year," Liu Zhenzhong, deputy director of Xiamen Security Science and Technology College told China Daily on Saturday.

Liu said the guards were dispatched to schools in the province and were trained to handle attackers, and taught to operate security facilities such as surveillance cameras, automatic alarms and face- and fingerprint-recognition systems.

Chen You, a division chief with the Fujian provincial public security bureau overseeing school security equipment, said his bureau had asked all schools and kindergartens to get equipped with high-tech security facilities right after the Nanping tragedy.

"A recent confidential survey by our bureau and the Ministry of Public Security showed that almost all schools in Fujian are now equipped with necessary security facilities," he said.

"But in some rural areas, schools are yet to be covered and strangers can still walk in and out of campus freely. Some school guards are not even equipped with basic facilities such as electric batons.

"That would make students vulnerable to danger. We are taking measures to solve these problems and we hope a tragedy like the Nanping case will never happen again," he said.

Local police have also been stationed at school gates before and after school each day to protect students since last year, he said.

To better ensure campus security, Liu has suggested different trials be conducted according to the students' ages to help them know how to protect themselves.

Students should also be equipped with simple mobile phones with global positioning functions and shortcut keys that can call for police assistance, he said.

Other cities in the country are also gearing up efforts to better protect students.

In Beijing's Xicheng district, schools and kindergartens have been equipped with defense sprays and slash-proof gloves.

In Shenyang, Liaoning province, teachers and security guards now patrol boarding schools 24 hours a day.