BAGUIO CITY – Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan urged the City Council to fastrack the passage of the updated Terms of Reference (TOR) for the conversion of the city’s street lighting system from the traditional system to the state-of-the-art Light Emitting Diode (LED) system to help save in power cost and to ensure the presence of environmentally-friendly lighting system.
The local chief executive said one of the conditions of the agreement for the transfer of the management of the city’s streetlights from the local government to the Benguet Electric Cooperative (BENECO) is for the city to convert its existing streetlighting system to LED.
“The City Council must already pass the updated Terms of Reference for our LED project to allow the conversion of our streetlights to the latest form of LED to guarantee sufficient savings in our increasing expenditures in the maintenance and operation of our streetlights,”Domogan stressed.
He added the local government will communicate with BENECO management that it should continue to maintain and operate the city’s streetlights pursuant to the earlier agreement until such time that the city will be able to pursue the conversion of its streetlights to LED.
Earlier, the BENECO Board of Directors passed a resolution signifying the cooperative’s intention to return to the local government the maintenance and operation of the city’s streetlights because it suffer end tremendous financial losses over the past five years that it managed the city’s streetlights and challenged the local government to comply with its commitment to convert its streetlighting system to the state-of-the-at LED system.
Domogan explained it was BENECO that signified its intention to takeover the maintenance and operation of the city’s streetlighting system, provided that, the city will pay the industry standard of 12 burning hours which the local government agreed.
In 2011, the City Council passed Resolution No. 446, series of 2011 prescribing the Terms of Reference for the conversion of the city’s streetlighting system to LED.
Because of the fast changing technology, the Special Bids and Awards Committee (SBAC) for the LED streetlighting system recommended the amendment of the original TOR but such proposal was never acted upon by the local legislative body.
Domogan claimed it is still best for the city if BENECO will still maintain and operate the city’s streetlighting system until such time that the local government will be able to implement the conversion of its streetlights from the traditional sodium bulbs to LED>
BENECO officials revealed more than 70 percent of the calls being received by their radio room daily is relative to the maintenance of streetlights in the different barangays of the city wherein bulk of the time of its personnel and the resources of the cooperative is dedicated to maintain the streetlights.
He appealed to BENECO for leniency in dealing with the situation because the local government is trying its best to fulfil its commitment to covert its streetlighting system to LED.
By Dexter A. See
