LED streetlights (circled) fail to come on in a Bhubaneswar street. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar: Sept. 15: At least nine light emitting diode (LED) streetlights installed by the Bhubaneswar Municipality Corporation (BMC) on the stretch between Ram Mandir Square and Master Canteen Square are not working.

The lights were fixed on the lampposts just a fortnight ago.

The lighting system that was inaugurated on Local Self-Government Day on August 31 cost a whopping Rs 82 lakh.

But to the utter disappointment of the residents, the street lightening system has failed to give proper illumination.

“The diodes are not able to illuminate the road properly and at present, some of them are also not coming on,” said Nirakar Biswal, a local resident.

Residents also criticised the authorities, as in a span of just a few days the LED lights have developed problems.

“The decision to introduce this type of lighting system is part of a publicity gimmick. If the situation is like this within one month, who knows what will be their condition after one year,” said Prasant Jena, another local resident.

The residents are not happy with the fact that the streetlights have failed to illuminate the roads properly.

“The luminosity of the diodes is not enough, as quite a large portion of the road remains in darkness after all the shops close for the day,” said Prabhudatta Mohapatra, another resident.

The BMC authorities had earlier decided to introduce the LED street lightning system to cut down the power bill which hovers between a whopping Rs 5 to 5.5 crore every year.

The entire model was adopted in the PPP (public private partnership) mode. At that time, the move had been criticised by some experts.

“Vadodara Municipal Corporation has implemented the IS-1944 (a coded standard) in streetlighting and won awards for energy efficiency in street lighting from the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) in 2008 and 2010. We could have adopted the model as BEE sets the trademark of energy efficiency in India,’’ said Piyushranjan Rout, a city-based urban management practitioner.

However, senior BMC officials said the problem had already been conveyed to the company that had installed the lights.

“We have already informed the company about the problem and it will take two to three days to solve the issue,” said Ajit Kumar Behera, assistant engineer, electricals, BMC.

He also said the lights were not able to illuminate the roads properly as they are wider than the other ones.