On October 31 last, when the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the LED street lights project was presented at a public meeting as part of the city Corporation’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, the civic body authorities were in a buoyant mood.
The shift to LED street lights across the city, which has been in the works for at least three years, finally appeared to be taking off.
However, two months later, the MoU is yet to be signed by the Kerala Small Industries Development Corporation (SIDCO), the implementing agency of the project. According to officials here, the changes at the helm of SIDCO are said to be one of the latest reasons.
“The new Managing Director of SIDCO apparently needs more time to study the project. So, we are not sure what is next,” says an official of the Engineering wing.
According to Corporation Mayor V.K. Prasanth, the Managing Director had sent a new query related to the project to the civic body. “The query regarding the criterion for selection of the implementing agency was received last week. We will give a reply soon,” said the Mayor. The LED project aims to replace all the 84,000 street lights across the city with LED lights in a phased manner. The project will begin with a GPS survey of the existing street lights across all the 100 wards of the Corporation. SIDCO will buy back the existing fluorescent lights.
A suggestion was put forward to give away the old street lights to nearby panchayats, but most panchayats were not keen on accepting old street lights. Once the agreement is signed, the replacement of all the street lights with LED lights is expected to be completed in 9 months.
Due to the delay in the implementation of the LED street light project, the city Corporation had twice last year called for tenders of considerable amounts in excess of Rs. 1 crore, for the maintenance and replacement of existing fluorescent lights.
Project aims to replace 84,000 street lights with LED It will begin with a GPS survey of the existing street lights
