Colombo Municipal Council looks at transforming Colombo into a smart green city
The Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) has been at the forefront of making the city more liveable for both residents and visitors by serving approximately 1.3 million people including 800,000 residents on a daily basis.
Considering that Colombo is an important city to all Sri Lankans, the CMC has, together with various partners, continually acted to facilitate the changes needed to modernise the city and Colombo is therefore considered one of the cleanest and safest cities in South Asia in comparison to other major cities of the same size in the region.
Colombo Mayor Rosy Senanayake holds the vision of transforming Colombo into a smart green city and in line with this vision, the CMC continues its efforts to make Colombo a world-class city, and makes further plans to modernise it in the future.
It is in this backdrop that the CMC recently announced a partnership with Richardson Technologies to install energy-efficient smart LED street lighting throughout the city starting this year.
According to local media reports, the aim is to ensure efficient lighting by leveraging the latest technology and knowhow at no capital cost to the rate payer.
The LED lights are to be installed on street lamp poles along main and other roads in consultation with the CMC to address deficiencies in both lighting and reliability of the street lighting system itself.
The CMC has entered a public-private partnership (PPP) for this project and this partnership requires the private entity to absorb capital costs in exchange for the ability to monetise over a period of time to recover their cost.
In turn, the city gets modernised with efficient and safer services and royalties from any solution successfully rolled out by the partner within the confines of the PPP contract.
It is important to note that the contract also allows Richardson the right to implement other technology offerings on the street lamp.
Colombo City has approximately 300 km of roads that the CMC provides lighting for and that are approximately 12,000 street lamps in Colombo.
OSL take:
Colombo is Sri Lanka’s commercial capital and is focused on development and introduction of the latest technologies. It is in this backdrop that the city’s administration is looking at transforming it in to a smart green city. This has opened up new business/investment opportunities. Foreign businesses/investors could explore opportunities in the Colombo city development and beautification programmes.
| Article Code : | VBS/AT/21102020/Z_3 |