Sir,
I wish to appeal to the authorities of Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) and the Corporators to adopt latest technology to conserve electricity wasted daily through thousands of street lights not being switched off well in time. It is strange to observe several street lights burning well after sunrise.
In these summer days, sunrise is quite early and a good 1.5 hrs of electricity could be saved if all the street lights could be switched off through a remote control-enabled switching system. At present this activity is manual-dependent and may have been contracted to a few agencies.
The persons to manually do this work are not always chosen from those who reside in nearby areas. I happened to meet such a person who gave an alibi of having to come from a far off city centre to as far as Ramakrishnanagar or Vivekanandanagar and Aravindanagar. What a waste of precious fuel and time besides not doing the work satisfactorily. During rainy season, the person may not be able to turn up at all for the whole day.
In some areas, many senior citizens have taken upon as social responsibility to switch off the lights during their early morning walk. But here lies the danger to them in so doing. At many such switch locations, the boxes are heavily corroded, no doors and no latches. The wires are left bare and hanging out. The connection is made through bare wire engaging each other loosely and generate a spark while attempting to disengage the same. I have seen many elders doing it with bare hands. It can result in shock or burn to them.
One can see such boxes “decorating” all the streets. Children are likely to come in live contact and in the rainy season leakage due to earthing may lead to animals come in contact while grazing near the poles.
Hope the authorities concerned will take note of this and do the needful.
– Prof. B.S. Shankara (retd.), Mysuru, 6.6.2020
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This post was published on June 8, 2020 5:55 pm