Arusha City Council is in the process of edging out a local company, Skytel from implementing the street lights project after it was discovered that the firm had breached the contract.
Arusha City
As a result, businesses, companies and institutions that had placed advertisements on city lamp posts under special arrangements with Skytel are now counting losses, as the city fathers have pulled them down.
City Director, Ms Sipora Liana stated here that other issues, including deciding who should foot the electricity bills for the town’s night illumination, are expected to be solved as soon as a successful bidder takes over.
Darkness clouded the Arusha City Street lights project last year when Arusha Regional Commissioner, Mr Magessa Mulongo ordered a special probe into the issue after it came to light that many of the street light bulbs were not working, yet the contractor was raking in money by selling advertising space on the lamp posts.
Mr Mulongo, expressed doubt regarding how Skytel who was granted the tender to light up the town. The dark streets of Arusha do not augur well with the high level international meetings that are hosted here.
Managing Director of Skytel, Mr Allbless Shoo had earlier on retaliated that it was the City Council officials who were causing problems. “It was my idea to come up with the idea of lighting up Arusha streets and my company Skytel moved in to solve the issue,” maintained Mr Shoo.
He said he invested 1.5 bil/- when the project started six-years ago in 2007 and between then and 2013 a further 1.5 bil/- was spent on operations and related maintenance.
“I installed 1,012 street lights which, together with the bulbs and light-sensing Photocells have cost two mil/- per pole, but vandalism has led to the destruction and theft of nearly 600 lamp posts all,” said Mr Shoo.
He explained further that the arrangement was that Skytel, an indoor and outdoor advertising agency, to light up the town pay electricity bills and earn revenue from billboards that were fixed on the lamp posts.
“But the Council later breached the agreement and took over the role of selling advertising space on the pole,” he says.
As Skytel tries to come to some amicable agreement with the City Council Tanzania Roads Agency (TANROADS) has ordering Skytel to remove lamp posts installed along Moshi-Arusha and Mianzini-Sakina highways.
By MARC NKWAME, Tanzania Daily News
