Biratnagar, August 9–Because of the lack of the required maintenance of its streetlights, the Biratnagar Metropolis has been turning into a city of darkness for the last eight months.
The supplier is not acting as per the contract as per which it should exchange old CFL bulbs for the new ones. As such, more than a half of the streetlamps in the metropolitan city are completely defunct. More shocking is the behavoiurs being displayed by the Biratnagar Metropolitan City Office in this respect. It is not only shirking its responsibility but also trying to protect the supplier of the bulbs- Sanjay Yadav of Kala Suppliers.
The Office has been awarding a contract of supplying the CFL bulbs to Yadav’s company for the last four years in a row. However, not a single new bulb was fitted in any streetlamp of the city particularly in the last fiscal year. As much as Rs 5.1 million was spent by the metropolis office for procuring electronic goods in the said year but around 60 percent of the streetlamps in the city have been currently useless. Similarly, though there are more than 17 thousand bulbs in the streetlights, only 13 hundred bulbs so far have been changed.
Such grim situation has much to do with the illicit collusion between the supplier and the officials of the Bitarnagar Metropolitan City Office including its mayor, the locals say.
