In an effort to improve street lighting across the old city area – 60 wards – the Coimbatore Corporation has embarked on a project to replace the existing lights with LED bulbs.
The Corporation officials said they have readied a proposal to be sent to the State Government to replace the 51,000-odd lights in the wards that fall within the five zones. The Corporation had estimated the expenditure at over ₹ 60 crore.
They said that after the expiry of the contract, a few years ago, to bring about energy savings in street lights, the Corporation had been just maintaining the lights through zone-wise contracts. The contractors only switched on and off the lights and replaced faulty bulbs.
The period also saw the maintenance go south as the Corporation failed to clear the contractors' bills in time and they in turn adopted cost cutting measures like terminating employees who were in-charge of switching on and off the lights. The result was that the number of faulty bulbs that were not replaced shot up and lights were aglow during the day as well.
Sometime ago, the Corporation cleared the dues and pulled up the contractors for delayed replacement of faulty bulbs. The sources said that the Corporation through a series of measures brought down the percentage of lights that did not glow from two digits to around five now.
Now the proposal was to replace 16,258 bulbs in East, 6,863 in West, 9,710 in North, 5,272 in South and 12,903 in Central zones.
The sources also said that the LED bulbs would be of uniform wattage, as specified by the Commissionerate of Municipal Administration.
The move would help the Corporation save over 40 % on power consumption charges, which it had witnessed when it replaced over 18,000 tube lights in added areas over two years ago, they added.