After receiving flak for spending over Rs.90 lakh for giving away sweets to its employees on Holi last year, the New Delhi Municipal Council will distribute LED bulbs this year keeping with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for conservation of energy.
NDMC chairperson Jalaj Shrivastava on Wednesday said the same amount of money, nearly Rs.1 crore, will be spent in distributing at least three 7-watt LED bulbs per NDMC employee. There are roughly 12,000 people employed with the civic body. “We will soon put out a tender for procuring these bulbs and we will prefer Indian manufacturers. This is the civic body’s way of being socially relevant and useful,” he said.
Prime Minister Modi had launched a scheme on Monday for distribution of LED bulbs under the Domestic Efficient Lighting Programme (DELP). As per the scheme, Light Emitting Diode (LED) bulbs will be provided to all domestic consumers at an initial payment of Rs.10 each, recovery of which will be done in 12 months from their electricity bill. The cost for an LED bulb to domestic consumer will thus be Rs.130 through the programme due to bulk procurement, compared to the current open market retail price in the range of Rs.350-Rs.600 for LED bulbs.
“In order to encourage our employees to conserve energy, we will distribute 3 LED bulbs to each of them on Holi,” said Mr. Shrivastava who has written a letter to all NDMC employees in this regard.
