Coimbatore : Many traffic signals in Coimbatore city have not been working for the past few days causing major traffic snarls. The reason for this has been non-payment of electricity bills. With the High Court ruling in March to remove all advertisements at traffic signals across the State, the question to be answered was on who will pay the electric bills.
Coimbatore : Many traffic signals in Coimbatore city have not been working for the past few days causing major traffic snarls. The reason for this has been non-payment of electricity bills. With the High Court ruling in March to remove all advertisements at traffic signals across the State, the question to be answered was on who will pay the electric bills. Except for Chennai, the State Government does not provide funds for maintenance of these traffic signals. The District Police have maintained signals using advertisement revenues generated from the ads displayed at the traffic signals. Now that the revenue from ads have stopped, signal maintenance became an issue because the Traffic Department claims that they do not have enough funds to pay the electricity bills. This is a huge issue in many cities but in Coimbatore, the Coimbatore Corporation has taken up the responsibility to pay the bills.
The High Court in March ordered the State Government to remove all ads, citing that the ads are causing distraction to the public which leads to accidents. The High Court order came in the case filed by a Coimbatore-based social activist Kathirmathiyon who had petitioned for removal of ads.
Advertisement revenue was the source for the Traffic Department to pay electricity bills and maintenance was taken up mostly by advertisers or private companies. The High Court had ordered the Government not to renew the license for ads and allowed only existing ads to continue till the license period was over, which was last October. But the advertisements were not removed till March 2019 and again Kathirmathiyon petitioned the court for the order to be implemented. Finally, the High court ordered the Tamil Nadu government to remove all advertisements which has now created the impasse.
In a first-ever initiative of its kind, the Coimbatore Corporation has rushed to the rescue by coming forward to pay the electricity bills for the signals in the city. The CCMC Commissioner, Shravan Kumar has a plan to pay the pending dues and pay the electricity bills hereon. "The EB line to the traffic signals is now under the commercial tariff. When the advertisers took licenses long ago, they would have paid a caution deposit. Now that the licenses of the original license holders has been cancelled, most of them would no longer be there and the money collected as caution deposit will still remain with the Electricity Board (EB). So, we requested the EB to adjust that money against the pending bills. Since the traffic signals will no longer have advertisements, they can be brought under the public utility category like the street lights which will reduce the tariff to a considerable amount. The Corporation also has a corpus with the money collected all these years as tax from the advertisers. This can be utilised now. Ultimately, it means road safety and public will not get affected. So CCMC has taken up the responsibility," stated the Commissioner.
Speaking on this, a senior police official said, "This issue came up when A K Viswanathan was the City Police Commissioner. There was a high level committee meeting regarding road safety and it was decided in that meeting that the revenue earned through advertisements at traffic signals will be used exclusively for road safety. Since the revenue was collected by the Corporation, the money went into the general corpus. Now that there is an issue, we requested the Corporation Commissioner for funds and he immediately obliged and the issue has been resolved."
On an average in Chennai alone, the Government spends Rs.3.5 crores per annum for traffic signal maintenance. In January 2019, the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister allotted 65 crores for road safety which is not sufficient for the entire state. The Traffic Department was dependent on the ad revenue and now they are left to fend for themselves.
Coimbatore city has 62 traffic signals and the NGO 'Uyir' which has spearheaded the road safety movement has plans to add 11 more according to a police source. Uyir inaugurated five modern traffic signals on Avinashi Road in February and the NGO has spent close to 5 crores toward buying CCTV and ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) cameras to aid the Police Department.
"Once CCMC takes responsibility for the EB bill for traffic lights, the traffic department has requested Uyir to take traffic signal maintenance throughout the city," said a senior police official. With the joint efforts of the city administration and the Police Department, the issue has been resolved and for the first time a City Corporation in Tamil Nadu has taken up the electricity costs of signals.