After a year’s delay, MCG begins maintenance and upgrade of street lights

According to Dwivedi, two months ago, the EESL had hired a single private contractor for upgrading infrastructure and carry out full-scale maintenance of the streetlights.

Nearly a year after 64,000 LED (light-emitting diode) streetlights were installed in the city, the work of maintaining them has finally begun, Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) officials said on Friday.

The non-functioning of streetlights had become a major worry for residents. (Parveen Kumar/Hindustan Times)

In August 2017, Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the MCG for installing LED streetlights. Work on this commenced in March last year and was finished in July, as per EESL officials.

“Earlier, agencies were just replacing the old lights with new ones, and doing minor repairs on the light pole. Now, work on upgrading infrastructure will commence,” Venkatesh Dwivedi, north zone manager, EESL, said.

According to Dwivedi, two months ago, the EESL had hired a single private contractor for upgrading infrastructure and carry out full-scale maintenance of the streetlights.

“Upgrade work mainly involves connecting the streetlights to electric circuit panels, and establishing a control room from where all 64,000 street lights can be controlled automatically. In addition, the functioning of streetlights can also be monitored from there, and in the eventuality a streetlight not functioning properly, workers can be dispatched immediately to fix it,” Dwivedi said.

He added that the contractor started work on infrastructure upgrade and maintenance work earlier this week. He said that in due course, the contractor will be the “sole operator” of all LED streetlights in the city, and the process of transferring maintenance duties of streetlights from agencies has started.

The non-functioning of streetlights had become a major worry for residents. Soon after work on installing streetlights was completed in July last year, residents in many parts of the city complained to the MCG that the newly installed units had stopped functioning.

Two months ago, former MCG commissioner Yashpal Yadav took notice of the issue and held a meeting with EESL officials. The issue of defective streetlights will be again discussed during the house meeting on July 1.

According to the agenda list for the house meeting, a lot of cases of theft and robbery are being reported due to unlit stretches and the MCG needs to appoints officials who will visit each of the 34 wards to identify areas where streetlights by EESL are not functioning, the date from which they have stopped functioning, and issuing directions for their replacement.

“Poor illumination in the area has become a cause for worry for us residents over the last six months,” Vicky Mishra, a resident of Sector 7, said.

Dwivedi said that as per the agreement with the MCG, 97% streetlights should be functioning. “EESL ensured that figures of non-functioning streetlights remained below 1,600,” he said.

Raman Yadav, executive engineer (electrical), said that the MCG has withheld a payment of ₹19 crore to EESL until maintenance and upgrade are completed.

“While EESL spent ₹20 crore and completed installing LED streetlights last year, the ₹18 crore upgrading work and the ₹4 crore work on panel installation and setting up a control room only started earlier this week. As a result, MCG has withheld its payment to EESL. Dues of over ₹19 crore will only be paid once the work is complete,” Yadav said