Penalties levied against GHMC Streetlight Contractors over poor Maintainence of Light
Nearly 80 percent of the contractors hired by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) have to pay heavy penalties due to low maintainence of streetlights.
The GHMC had awarded streetlights maintenance contract to 55 contractors by dividing them into packages. In each package 7,000 streetlights should be maintained by the contractor. And the contractor gets Rs 1.40 lakh per month towards maintenance of the lights.
In just two months (May and June), the GHMC has collected over Rs 2 lakh as penalties from contractors. Contractors handling six packages did not pay any penalty in May, while 12 of the 55 contractors were spared from penalisation by the corporation in June.
The civic body has started imposing penalties on contractors under four categories in maintenance of streetlights from May. Contractors have to pay Rs 15 per bulb as penalty if the streetlights are not glowing during nighttime or glowing during daytime. Apart from this, if there is any problem in streetlights or bulb has to be replaced, it has to be done within 48 hours and, failing which, the contractor has to pay penalty per day.
GHMC officials said Rs 1,18,664 penalty was imposed in May and Rs 94,416 fine in June. The Chatrinaka package contractor had to pay Rs 31,651 penalty in May and Rs 22,121 in June. Contractors in areas like Balanagar, Kapra-1, Chandanagar-II, KPHB colony, Alwal-1, Ramachandrapuram and Patancheru were also fined heavily for improper maintenance of streetlights.
For maintenance and other repair works, the contractor has to engage 13 employees, both skilled and non-skilled in their respective packages. If any labourer or worker is absent, his daily salary would be deducted from the contract amount. About Rs 65,100 in May and Rs 47,400 in June penalty has been collected as fine for not deploying men to attend repairs immediately.
“There is an improvement in maintenance of streetlights after we started imposing penalties. The glowing per cent (average) is about 95 per cent in the entire city,” GHMC additional commissioner D Jayaraj Kennedy told TOI. Meanwhile, the GHMC is contemplating to purchase seven mini-ladders and three big ones for repairing streetlights. As of now, the corporation has 11 mini-ladders and two big ones.
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