Mumbai: The Bihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking has proposed installation of smart automated street lights in the city.
The proposed project will be an Automated Streetlighting Management System (ASMS), which includes installation of softwares and digitising all the 462 street lighting pillars, which centrally control all the 41,000 street lights across the island city. The centralised control will enable automatic street light control with improved light intensity with reduced power consumption.
The objective of installing the system is to provide, fully automated street light control which will be both cost effective and minimise manpower. The concept of ASMS requires a modern day transistor, thus discarding the manual switching of the lights. The transistors will automatically switch on the lights when the daylight falls.
The tenders of the said project was floated earlier in 2019 and Chennai based firm - SPJ solution has bagged the contract worth of Rs 5 crores including seven years of maintenance. The project is expected to be completed in the next six months.
Members of the BEST committee have opposed the proposal stating the contract being given to a private firm shows the management is gradually inching towards privatisation.
“The management must not that by giving the contract to a private firm it is encouraging privatisation,” said BEST committee member and Congress corporator, Ravi Raja.
“Earlier several electrical contract were given to private players by the management, but none of them gave any result. The management should not if this project also doesn’t materialise they will be blamed as presently BEST is under huge debt,” Raja added.
However, BEST general manager, Surendrakumar Bagde asserted this new system will give better illumination and better service to the Mumbaikars.
“BEST is upgrading its service with par to the available technology. This upgradation will lead us to give better and cost effective service to the Mumbaikars. The management has also noted all the proposed solutions and will look into them,” said Bagde.
