Chennai Corporation to roll out tender for street lights worth Rs 90 cr

CHENNAI:The local administration of Chennai resolved to undertake the maintenance work of street lights across the city and high mast lights for a year, along with procuring LED lights. The project is worth Rs 94.10 crores.

The Greater Chennai Corporation has resolved to maintain all street lights (3.01 lakh) within its limit to provide safe and secure transportation for the citizens. Maintenance of 507 high mast lights installed across all the zones will also be undertaken.

According to the resolution, street lights and high mast lights maintenance will be undertaken by private contractors for a year. Usually, the maintenance of these lights is done by the in-house electrical department. Per the local body's assessment, the maintenance alone will cost Rs 54.44 crore.

To purchase 40,688 LED lights and replace the damaged ones, the city corporation will spend Rs 39.66 crores. For this project, GCC is set to outsource electricians and workers and hire necessary machinery and tools, including hydraulic vehicles and ladders. The civic body also prefers to replace retiring employees with contract workers.

In 10 zones, the GCC had already roped in contract workers to maintain the street lights. Now, the local body is looking to increase the number of contract personnel as 420 permanent employees are superannuating soon. Hence, 152 contract workers are set to take up the places of permanent employees.

If the contractors fail to rectify defects after receiving complaints from the public, they will be charged 5 to 15 per cent of the cost per light pole as a fine. Similarly, if contractors fail to deploy workers in compliance with the mentioned numbers and lag in maintaining the machinery, fines will be levied, the GCC notified.

Maintaining all the luminaries, junction boxes, poles, feeder pillar, cable termination with glands and lugs, etc. as specified in the tender documents, if works are found incomplete, will be considered as non-working of light and penalty cause as per non-working street light shall be charged, said GCC.

It also mentioned that switching ON and OFF of street light poles as per schedule given by Chennai Corporation and the contractor has to submit the report of the same every fifteen days, if not, a penalty of Rs 500 per day will be charged.