Bhubaneswar, July 20: A modern control room for the upkeep of LED street lights became functional at the BMC-Bhawani Mall in Saheed Nagar here today.

The control room will have two major responsibilities -controlling the lights through an automatic mechanism and running a toll-free service to redress the complaints of people about street lights.

To lodge a complaint, residents will have to dial 1800-345-7116 or 0674-2541051 between 8am and 8pm so that steps can be taken to repair them. The number will start functioning from Tuesday.

The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has engaged Nasik-based Super Wealth Financial Enterprises Pvt Ltd to replace 20,000 street lights with LED ones. The company has so far fitted 13,000 lights and will take care of the rest 7,000 in the next three to four months.

The firm has deputed six mobile teams and one hydraulic ladder for the upkeep of LED lights across the city.

"The control room's large computer screen will display all the 130 control panels of the city that are fitted with have LED lights. Since all the panels are fitted with SIM (subscriber identity module) cards, if there is any problem with the panels the cards will send a message to the control room through the telephone network. One can also find out if there is a problem with the lights by studying the display on computer screens," said manager for the city LED project Manoj Panchakshari.

The LED lights also make it easy for those managing the project to know the exact consumption power. For each non-functional LED light, there would be 0.5 ampere less consumption of power.

"To be on safe side, we have also collected SIM card numbers of residents and especially shop owners staying near the control panels so that in case of any problem they can call us or even give a missed call to alert the operator," said Panchakshari.

BMC deputy commissioner (projects and public relations) Srimanta Mishra said: "We spend Rs 70 to Rs 80 lakh per month to light up the street. According to the agreement with the company, it will have to bring down the expenses to less than 80 per cent or more. The civic body thus can utilise funds in other development projects."

Another senior BMC official said the civic body had a plan to replace the remaining 18,000 to 20,000 street lights. The tender process is already in the pipeline, he said.

The civic body had engaged a consultant to do a preliminary survey for the Phase-II LED conversion work.

FUTURE PLAN

•  Present timing of 8am to 8pm may be revised to 9am-9pm in coming days
•  In future, toll-free number to have interactive voice recognition system (IVRS) facility
•  Proposed voice record facility will help complainant lodge grievance beyond official hour
•  Street lights top the list of grievances lodged at corporation