In an effort to ease the drawing of electricity from main grids, the District Panchayat administration is to set up solar-powered street lights to lit public places in semi-urban and rural areas across 13 blocks in the district at an estimated total outlay of Rs.45.5 lakh.
District panchayat chairman M. Shanmugam told The Hindu that the lights would be set up at places where the people throng in large numbers like bus stations, commercial places, markets and also in areas where the streets were lonely.
“The project will be implemented with funds taken from the internal corpus of the district panchayat administration,” he said.
According to him, promotion of more solar-powered lights will not only reduce the dependency on state grid but also help promote tapping clean sources of energy.
Besides this project, the District Panchayat administration had set plans to improve other basic infrastructure in rural areas at a project cost of Rs.1.02 crore.
“The focus will be on laying new roads and improvement of existing roads as well as drainage network,” Mr. Shanmugam said.
