Srinagar, May 29: Believe it or not, the Srinagar Municipal Corporation has been looking after the City streetlights for the past nearly a decade but without any expertise. Reasons: the civic body has no electric engineers to do the professional work.
 Diploma engineers of Mechanical wing of the SMC and some others who could be taken as laymen have been looking after the electric system snaking across the City.

THE ODD JOB
 In mid of 2000 when the Municipal Corporation Act came to force, the government got the maintenance/installation of streetlights shifted to SMC domain relieving the Power Development Department of the job.
 Since then over 9000 and growing lights are being managed by the civic body. But till now the government has failed to establish a separate electric wing for the work.

THE DISCRIMINATION
 Though the transfer of streetlighting from PDD to civic body took place in the winter Capital as well, the state government was prompt enough to equip the Jammu Municipal Corporation with a separate Electric Wing.
 Sources said a unit of PDD was transferred to the JMC to look after the lighting. But for Srinagar, the government never acted.

THE MESS
 As had to be, in the absence of expertise, the Srinagar streetlighting is often in a mess.
 In fact there’s so much of chaos that the SMC has failed to keep track of its area of domain. Take the case of lighting on bridges on the south City bypass. The lights are defunct for years while no department including SMC is willing to own them.
 Similar is the confusion in the heart of the City. Nobody is willing to own the responsibility of lighting on the Lal Mandi footbridge. Embarassed at the non-functioning of the lights, a few months back, the Roads and Building department had got the lights repaired on the personal intervention of the MoS R&B Javed Dar.
 On the other hand the lights in the tourist hub of Dalgate and the adjacent Dal Banks often remain out of order.

‘THE FLOP SHOW’
 Interestingly, SMC’s Mechanical Wing, as per the insiders, doesn’t even have requisite expertise to run its own affairs than to talk of other engineering streams.
 “A diploma holder in Mechanical Engineer is posted as Executive Engineer, it’s like making a nurse to surgeon’s job,” said a junior engineer working the wing.
 “Asking our weak wing to do additional job which is logically beyond our competence is simply an insult to injury but then who cares,” he added.

OFFICIALS SPEAK
 The SMC Commissioner Sheikh Mushtaq said: “We are already in the know of the electrical wing issue and are working at it.”
 “A proposal has already been sent and the government is keen to do the needful,” the Commissioner said.
 He, however, refuted that the streetlights was a failure in the absence of the concerned wing.
 “There’s no problem with streetlights… We keep on hiring private services as and when required to keep the show go on,” Mushtaq said.

Lastupdate on : Sun, 29 May 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sun, 29 May 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Mon, 30 May 2011 00:00:00 IST