The Director-General, Kano Metropolitan Agency, Abdullahi Ramat, has disclosed that the state government spends at least N200million monthly in maintaining the149 generators powering the street lights in the state.

DAILY NIGERIAN reports that the Kano Metropolitan Agency is saddled with the responsibilities of maintaining street lights and beautification of the metropolis.

In a programme on Freedom Radio, monitored in Kano on Sunday, Mr Ramat said the government was looking for ways to cut these costs by adopting environment-friendly bulbs that consume fewer watts and less diesel to be powered.

According to him, the agency is changing the bulbs that consume 400 watts each to more economic and environment-friendly LED bulbs that consume 60 watts.

“That means each street light pole instead of exhausting 800 watts, would now exhaust 120 watts each,” he explained.

Speaking on the ongoing renovation on the streetlights, the D-G said the project was aimed at improving the illumination and reducing monthly cost on diesel to power the generators.

Mr Ramat disclosed that the agency would be able to save at least N150 million monthly as the cost of buying diesel for the 149 generators used for powering the street lights is about N200m a month.

‘’So at the end of the day, we would need less than 50 generators to power these street lights as we have mapped out each of the areas into clusters whereby fewer generators would be needed.

The D-G, however, revealed that the agency had developed a new strategy to bury its electrical cables to safeguard them from vandals.

He also disclosed that there is strong collaboration with security agencies to prevent vandals from carrying out their illicit acts.