About 39km of roads in the city have been identified as “no-light” or “low-light” zones, the mayoral council member heading the lighting department of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) said on Monday.
Sandip Bakshi said no-light and low-light zones were places where there were long gaps between two street lights or where a considerable stretch of a street did not have any light. This made the stretches or the roads dark.
“The KMC has identified no-light and low-light zones in the wards. These add up to nearly 39km of roads. We are installing poles and new lights on these stretches,” Bakshi told the civic house during a discussion on the KMC’s budget for the 2023-24 fiscal, which was presented by the mayor on Friday.
The civic body has installed lights on about 10km of these roads, said Bakshi.
On Monday, a team from the civic body trimmed some tree branches on Gurusaday Dutt Road which were preventing light from street lamps from illuminating the area properly. The team went with hydraulic ladders for the trimming.
“The work will continue on Tuesday. We are yet to start working on Ballygunge Circular Road,” said a KMC official.
The Telegraph reported on Friday that many roads in the city were now dark at night. Dusty and ill-maintained lamps, overgrown plantations, broken and left-like-that street lights force large parts of the city into darkness, which only thickens after lights in shops and signboards are switched off.
Several stretches on Southern Avenue, Gurusaday Dutt Road, Ballygunge Circular Road, Jawaharlal Nehru Road, Prince Anwar Shah Road and Jadavpur do not have adequate illumination.
Poorly-lit stretches are risky for pedestrians as well as motorists, and they also pose safety risks, especially for women and the elderly. Residents of some of the poorly lit stretches in Kolkata have told this newspaper they are scared to step out and move around their neighbourhoods at night.
A senior official of the civic body said they had installed lights in some of the no-light and low-light zones with money from the Nirbhaya Fund, a fund set up by the Centre for projects aimed at enhancing women’s safety.
The official said lights had been installed along the southern boundary of Rabindra Sarobar, around a mother-and-child hospital near Hazra and in Tollygunge.
“We have so far installed poles and lights worth Rs 32 lakh in the 2022-23 fiscal using money from the Nirbhaya Fund. We are identifying poorly lit stretches outside schools and colleges, especially outside girls’ schools and women’s colleges,” said the official.
While speaking at the civic house on Monday, Bakshi also asked the councillors to intimate the lighting department of the KMC if they found that a light that was installed recently had started malfunctioning.
The lighting department of the KMC, he said, has so far replaced half of the 3 lakh-odd sodium vapour lamps along roads with LED lights. “The conversion has helped us reduce the bill for street lights,” he said.
