Kolkata team takes tips from BMC

BHUBANESWAR: To learn the best practices adopted by the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), a team from Kolkata Municipal Corporation comprising six officials and two corporators visited the city here on Friday.
BMC mayor Anant Narayan Jena said the team was mainly interested in the energy saving LED streetlights that have been installed here and regulation of street vending zones."It was a knowledge exchange programme and we had a meeting after they arrived in BMC office. Our officials made presentation on how BMC has taken up development projects on Public private Partnership (PPP) mode, how holding tax is being collected and how we have solid waste is being segregated and processed," said the mayor.
The Bhubaneswar civic body has completed installation of 20,000 LED lights replacing the tradional ones. A recent energy audit revealed that because of LED lights power could be saved up to 85% compared to what was being consumed in traditional lights. Our technical team gave presentation that LED bulbs have 50, 000 hour of longevity compared to normal bulbs, which have less than 10, 000 hours of life, mayor added.
The BMC has entered into a 10-year agreement with the private company, which has been selected by the International Financial Corporation (IFC), which is providing technical assistance to the BMC to install energy efficient lights.
In September, the Kolkata civic body on an experimental basis installed 300 LED lights along a selected stretch. It has targeted to install 3 lakh such lights after taking experience from Bhubaneswar.
We have streamlined the public transport system to a great extent by taking up metro railways and Bus Rapid Transport System. But, we wanted to know more about energy saving LED lights. Street vending is also an issue that we need to organize, mayor said quoting Kolkata civic body corporator Arup Chakraborty (ward 110) as saying.
In the evening, the mayor escorted the team to visit heritage sites such as Khandagiri and Udayagiri caves. A team from BMC will also visit Kolkata soon to learn how the BRTS is operating there, said Jena.
On August 9, a team from Chennai Municipal Corporation, which visited Bhubaneswar, evinced interest to learn from the former. Chennai is yet to have energy saving street lights. The Chennai civic body has 1.19 lakh lights, around four time that of BMC.