The Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) issued a show cause notice to the contractor appointed to set up charging stations for electric vehicles at 20 places under the civic jurisdiction. While the work order was issued in March, even after 5 months, not a single charging station was commissioned.
The transport undertaking of NMMC issued the notice last week and a reply has also been received. Yogesh Kaduskar, deputy commissioner (Transportation), said that they are going through the reply.
The civic body is setting up charging stations on a revenue-sharing basis with the contractor. The charges for charging vehicles will include the basic tariff, service charge, and taxes. There will be different slabs for different timings.
However, there is a constant delay from the contractor in executing the work. "We had issued a notice last week and asked why the contract should not be cancelled for the delay," said Kaduskar.
The work on the charging station near Jewel of Navi Mumbai in Nerul was at the last stage and even a trial run was conducted. However, due to some errors, the whole process was stalled. The civic administration has given March 2023 as the final deadline for setting up all 20 charging stations. Senior civic officials, along with the contractor, have already paid a visit to all the prospect sites for the charging station.
While fossil fuel prices have been commanding a high price for a long time, people are shifting toward pollution-free electric vehicles. However, due to the lack of charging stations, many of them have put on hold their plans to buy electric vehicles. The Panvel RTO alone registered over 170 electric vehicles by the end of July 2022. Even the Vashi RTO saw a similar trend in the registration of electric vehicles.
As per the plan, there are two charging units at the Nerul site and they will add four more units after the operation starts. "In around 90 to 100 minutes, the batteries of the electric vehicles will be charged," said an official from the Transport Department of NMMC.
The civic administration is encouraging the use of the maximum number of electric vehicles from the point of view of an eco-friendly city.
