The city Corporation is on the verge of signing agreements with 15 separate contractors for the maintenance of street lights that fall within its jurisdiction.
The Corporation on Saturday held discussions with contractors to arrive on the terms and conditions before finalising the agreement.
“We had a very fruitful discussion with the contractors. A few more things have to be worked out before the agreement was signed. The Corporation hopes to finalise the agreement by December 12,” said chairman of Standing Committee for Works V. S Padmakumar.
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The contractors, most of them regular contractors of the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB), have almost agreed to charge the same amount of maintenance fee that they collected from the KSEB. The maintenance fee fixed by the KSEB for fluorescent lamp is Rs.266 and for sodium vapour lamp is Rs.1,065, he said adding the amount would be fixed in the next meeting, scheduled to be held on Thursday, with the contractors.
The civic body decided to call for separate tenders for each of 30 electrical sections as allocating the work to a single party would delay the maintenance work. In each section, the civic body has got around 2,500 streetlights under its control.
“As of now, only 15 contractors have come forward. We are having talks with them to engage the same contractors in the remaining 15 sections,” Mr. Padmakumar said.
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The initial plan was to deposit an advance amount of Rs.25 lakh with the KSEB to carry out the maintenance work. The civic body decided to contract the maintenance job after the KSEB sought details from the Corporation about the street lights installed in the 100 wards.
After the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation failed to get response from private contractors to its tender called on November 8, it invited fresh tenders downgrading the minimum requirement for contractors from ‘licensed’ to ‘contractors having experience certificate from the KSEB.