BAGUIO CITY – Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan ordered the City General Services Office (GSO) to assess the city’s Light Emitting Diode (LED) streetlight project to ascertain if it complies with existing standards and ready to be bidded out.
The local chief executive claimed the city’s LED streetlight project is long overdue, thus, the GSO must ascertain if the TOR approved in 2011 is still compliant with existing industry standards so that it could already proceed with the public bidding of the project.
“We want to push through with the project but it seems that there are some new trends in the industry that might have rendered our earlier terms of reference outdated so we must reassess our position to prevent further complications once we bid out the project,” Domogan stressed.
He admitted the local government has a commitment with the Benguet Electric Cooperative (BENECO) to replace the old streetlight bulbs with LED bulbs to convert to environment-friendly and energy efficient fixtures to save on the city’s huge power expenses.
In 2011, the City Council approved Resolution No. 446, series of 2011 prescribing the terms of reference for the city’s LED project but the Bids and Wards Committee (BAC) recommended for the revision of the TOR which was subsequently delayed.
According to him, converting the city’s streetlighting system to LED is the ultimate way to go but the local government must first make sure that the project will ensure quality lighting at the least cost to the government.
He explained the city is guaranteed 30 percent savings on its existing P60 million annual expenses for streetlight once it will covert the existing system to LED with the replacement of sodium bulbs to LED.
BENECO management wants the local government to fastrack the immediate conversion of its existing streetlight system to LED to prevent it from incurring further heavy losses as it is the one maintaining the more than 9,000 streetlight fixtures distributed around the city.
He urged the GSO to come out with its detailed findings and recommendations the earliest possible time so that the city will evaluate what option to take to realize the LED streetlight project.
If the local legislative body will take longer to deliberate on the project, he said it will be best for the city to use the original TOR for the bidding as long as there will be no evident differences in the specifications of the LED bulbs to be used compared to the latest type of bulbs.
He appealed to the BENECO management to continue maintaining and operating the city’s streetlights as the city tries its best to implement this long-delayed LED project to help lessen the huge expenditures of the cooperative. /By Dexter A. See#
