KOLKATA:
I leave my home 8:00am regularly for office (weekdays). After checking my mobile and handkerchief are with me, first thing I notice all street lights are still glowing. After 6 o’clock maximum 6:30 there is no requirement of these for clarity (other than we have solar eclipse). The Sun, mother of our planet takes care of it..the sun is more punctual than the human being!

I worked in power sector (thermal power plant), I know how much manpower and continuous monitoring are needed to produce power hour to hour basis. Any shortfall of water or fuel or any malfunction of even small equipment can lead to unit trip.

As the street lights are government or municipality property, we keep silent about that. I am not sure the electricity distribution department or urban municipality department, who are responsible for that wastage...even I don’t know any person is employed for to switch on or off the lights in time. What I know we are wasting power daily for nothing..not only that even the ‘life’ of the lights become less due to unnecessary usage.

There are thousands of streetlights across the city including tubelights and halogen and for some special crossing there are high mast lights. If I am not wrong we can save Mega watts (lakhs of rupees) by stopping this!

The utter callousness must be stopped and strict attention to be initiated against guilty staffs.