Six companies have responded to the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation’s expression of desire for a project to shift the entire streetlight system in the city to LED lights and maintain it over a period of ten years. The respondents included one company from Mumbai, one from Bengaluru, one from Delhi and three from Kerala.
A technical committee constituted by the corporation has evaluated the technical bids and sought certain clarifications from the companies, which have to respond within two weeks. After this the financial bid will be opened. Currently, around 60% of the streetlights in the city have already been converted to LEDs.
The civic body has proposed a public-private partnership model under which it will not pay a fixed amount annually for the maintenance of streetlights. The selected company will also have to set up a centralized monitoring system that will provide a real-time picture of non-working street lights. The corporation plans to include sections including fines for not maintaining street lights within 48 hours. This section is being included as delay in redressal of complaints is one of the issues of streetlight maintenance in the city.
Kozhikode Corporation is currently following a similar model, which has allowed it to reduce its annual expenditure on streetlight maintenance and electricity bills. Newly installed LED street lights should conform to national standards on the brightness of street lights. So far, the civic body is banking on the Kerala State Electricity Board, which replaces the streetlights in phases after the corporation collects the advance money.
The civic body first mooted the plan to switch to LED streetlights in 2014. This period saw several rounds of discussions, postponements and controversies regarding the project, which was continuously caught in the processing stage.
The initial plan was to hire the services of a private firm to replace all the city’s street lights in one go. Though the expression of interest was issued and several companies responded, the move did not proceed. Though there were later plans to hire CIDCO for the project, that too was shelved.