Street lights dept in holy city streamlined, says mayor

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, May 2

Reacting to allegations levelled against him by Leader of Opposition Raj Kanwal Pritpal Singh Lucky, Mayor Bakshi Ram Arora said the MC had streamlined the work to install and equip street lights in all 65 wards of the city. Shooting down the allegations as just another attempt to malign his image, Arora said Lucky would be blind not to see the street lights installed in every area of the city.

“We have employed two technicians for maintaining street lights and ensure their smooth functioning in every ward. A budget of Rs 32 lakh has been passed for buying infrastructure support for the maintenance and installation of new street lights in areas where it is necessary and qualified workforce has been put to work. And while doing so, we have managed to cut down the expenditure by almost half as compared to the earlier system. So, where does the question of inefficiency and poor governance arise?” he said.

Stating that the contractual system followed earlier to maintain and manage street lights in the city was not transparent, he also said that contractors were actually conning the corporation and public of their money.“The contractors hired by the PSPCL were an charging exorbitant amount from the corporation and still under performing as 80 per cent of the time the street lights did not function. Once the contractual system was done away with, I suggested that each councillor be given the responsibility of his ward and allotted two employees for maintenance of street lights along with Rs 50,000 worth of infrastructure. This was later improvised upon and a collective budget of Rs 32 lakh was passed recently for the installation of street lights. We have been doing everything possible to ensure that the city is well lit.”

He said if councillors had any complaints regarding the non-functioning staff or the infrastructure problems, he was ready to hear them out. “I am ready to take action if any worker is not performing his duty. But this mindless allegations just to lobby with the contractors and play vote-bank politics should be stopped,” he said.