Vijayawada: State government to take steps to improve LED street lighting in villages

Vijayawada: The State government is considering revamping the Complaint Monitoring System of LED to ensure effective maintenance of LED street lighting in the State. The government envisages participation of three departments, such as Panchayat Raj, Energy and Gram Volunteers and Village Secretariat, to strengthen field level network, ensure quick and perfect maintenance of street lights and provide best services to people.

As part of the efforts, around 7,000 energy assistants (junior linemen) and 2.6 lakh village volunteers will be involved to strengthen the monitoring the LED lighting in the State.

Till date around 25.04 lakh LED street lights were installed in Gram Panchayats, out of which the Energy Efficiency Service Limited (EESL) had installed about 23.54 lakh in all the 13 districts apart from 6.2 lakh in urban areas. The EESL is ready to install another 5 lakhs lights in uncovered areas, newly extended colonies of Gram Panchayats, if necessary.

The installation of LED lights in villages is intended to save an estimated 260 million units of energy per year apart from monitory savings of around Rs 156 crore per year.

According to Energy Department officials, the existing street lights maintenance system is inadequate and must be revamped with the available man power. Officials said the maintenance agencies have envisaged two technicians for every 4,000 street lights to look after the maintenance issues, which works out two technicians for 20 Gram Panchayats or one Mandal due to which, abnormal delay is taking place in attending to repairs. It is taking 7 to 9 days to resolve a complaint instead of 72 hours as per agreement. Now efforts are on to reduce the repairs and maintenance time to only 48 hours.

Now, it is proposed to appoint one technician to maintain 1,000 LED street lights and it will facilitate to speed up the repairs and maintenance. With the revamping of supervision, assembly level officials will be appointed in addition to the district and revenue division officials for effectively monitoring of LED lighting.

Minister for Panchayat Raj Peddireddy Ramachandra Reddy directed Principal Secretary of PR &RD Gopal Krishna Dwivedi and Commissioner of Panchayat Raj M Girija Shankar to submit a concrete action plan for improving the maintenance of street lighting in the villages at the forthcoming high-level meeting to be held very soon.

The Panchayat Raj department takes the overall responsibility and the remaining two departments village/ward secretariats and energy department will cooperate to strengthen the street lighting system in the State, said Minister Peddireddy Ramachandra Reddy. The Energy Efficiency Service Limited has invested Rs.950 Crore in Rural LED project and Rs.550 Crs in Urban LED project in the State.