the goan I network
MAPUSA
It will be a grim festival of lights for the residents of Mapusa, as senior officials of the electricity department have expressed inability to fix the problems with street lights before Diwali.
The executive engineer and the assistant engineer of the electricity department (Div. VI), Mapusa informed the councillors of the Mapusa Municipal Council (MMC) that it would be very difficult to resolve the issues about the street lights.
“We are helpless as the maintenance of the street lights has been outsourced to a private agency. The staff of the electricity department no longer looks after the streets lights,” said AE Subhash Parsekar.
The electricity department officials were interacting with the councillors to discuss power related issues in Mapusa at the behest of the MMC chairperson Ryan Braganza.
Raising the issue of street lights, former chairperson and senior councilor, Sandip Falari opined that the earlier system was better when the elected representatives could easily call up the department officials and rectify problems.
“Now, whenever there are problems with the street lights, we cannot call the department JEs nor can we call the officials of the private agency that is entrusted with the maintenance,” Falari said.
Braganza admitted that there were issues concerning the street lights and he had received complaints from several councillors and the general public.
In many areas, street lights failed to come on during the nights and there were instances when the street lights remained on during the day exposing the problem with the ‘timer’.
The issue of maintenance of LED streetlights had cropped up during the last assembly session and Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar had informed the House that issues pertaining to LED streetlights would be resolved by August-end.
Parrikar had admitted that there was a problem mainly because the contractor had failed to execute its task.
On the tripping of power in the last couple of days, AE Subhash Parsekar attributed the problem to sudden surge in load from certain areas in the city.
He said the department had asked for new transformers and was awaiting government sanction to get the work moving.
Shifting of transformers in Mapusa market, low voltage hampering pumping activity at the water reservoir, power load on two transformers in Khorlim and other issues were also discussed.
Besides Executive Engineer Pradip Narvekar and Asistant Engineer Subhash Parsekar, JEs, Resha Pednekar, Savio Ferrao and Shripad Gawde were also present for the meeting. MMC councilors Sudir Kandolkar, Rajsingh Rane, Sanjay Mishal and Martin Carrasco were present.
