COIMBATORE: The Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation (CCMC) is all set to install 5,700 new LED streetlights across the city in the upcoming days. This apart, the civic body is also considering choosing a new contractor for the operation & maintenance (O&M) of the existing streetlights in the city, as numerous complaints keep piling up against the existing contractor.
The CCMC, which is spread across 257.04 sq km, has a total of 100 wards in 5 zones. With around 19,000 streets in the CCMC, the city comprises a total of 3,236.96km of roads, which includes over 220km of roads that are under the control of both national and state highways departments. The civic body has been maintaining a total of 1.05 lakh streetlights across the city.
However, numerous streets of Coimbatore city have been reeling in darkness due to the lack of streetlights over the years. The newly-added areas and newly-paved roads in the city have been waiting to be lit up for a long time. Meanwhile, some of the streetlights that have already been installed in the streets of Kovai have started malfunctioning due to low lux. In view of this, the CCMC has planned to install over 5,700 new streetlights across the city soon.
Speaking to TNIE, CCMC Commissioner Katta Ravi Teja said, "We've planned to install around 5,700 new LED streetlights across the city. The work is set to begin soon.
By collaborating with police officials, we've received a list of places where anti-social activities are frequently reported. We shall be prioritising those places in the first phase. Similarly, we're planning to go for a fresh tender for the O&M of existing streetlights across the city."
The commissioner also revealed that the civic body would explore options for taking action or blacklisting the existing contractor following numerous complaints.
Sources said that currently, no streetlight has been integrated with the Integrated Command & Control Centre (ICCC). There are two monitoring systems — Individual Light Monitoring System (ILM) and Group Light Monitoring System (GLM). While Chennai has ILM, the same couldn't be implemented in Coimbatore owing to its high cost.