THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Poorly-lit streets have become a concern of people in the capital. The streetlights at several parts of the city, including the major stretches like the Vellayambalam-LMS and the Chackai-General Hospital junctions, have been lying dysfunctional for the past two months.
The Chackai flyover on the NH-66 has been plunging into darkness after sunset due to the same reason. The 80 streetlights installed a year ago at the black spots of the bypass by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) have now gone defunct.
Safety has gone for a toss in the wake of the situation. The Kerala Road Fund Board (KRFB) is in charge of maintaining the lights at Vellayambalam-LMS and the Chackai-General Hospital junctions. KRFB, however, blamed the KSEB for not resuming the power connection due to faulty meters.
According to a KRFB official, the board had asked the KSEB to resume the power connection by replacing the faulty meters, but it wasn’t fixed on time. “We are in constant touch with the KSEB. At the same time, ANERT has been instructed to replace the faulty streetlights. So, we will rectify the issue very soon,” the official said, adding that of the 42km road under the KRFB, lights on the 14km stretch will be replaced with solar-powered LED lamps within two months.
Meanwhile, the replacement of lights on the roads under the city corporation with LED lamps will take six more months. The tender procedures have apparently delayed the process. As many as six companies participated in the process, of which three are from Kerala. “The financial evaluation by the committee formed for the project will be done on Tuesday.
Once done, we will submit the report for the corporation council’s approval, finalise the tender and strike a deal with the contractor. So it will take a few months to begin the installation of new LED lights,” said Binu Francis, corporation secretary. The technical evaluation by the committee was completed last month. However, it pointed out defects in the bids submitted by the companies. Therefore, the committee had given two more weeks to the companies to come up with a new proposal, which was evaluated recently. In addition to installation, the partners will be responsible for 10 years of maintenance.
The private partner will also pay for material purchases and electricity costs during this period. The corporation has plans to instal more than 1 lakh streetlights in the city. As per recent estimates, Thiruvananthapuram has approximately 1.08 lakh streetlights throughout the city. Of this, only 40% is operational.
Design readied for streetlight project
The project to instal streetlights on the medians from Killipalam to Pravachambalam is on. The absence of streetlights and lack of proper maintenance on the median from Karamana to Pravachambalam of the state highway leading to Tamil Nadu has been giving jitters to motorists and pedestrians. Adding to the woes, the median has turned into a dump yard. The design of the project, which includes beautification of the median and installation of streetlights, has been readied.
Safety gone for a toss