Elephanta Island to Get Electricity Soon

Mumbai, May 13 – Nearly 1,500 villagers living on the Elephanta Island will for the first timehave regular electricity supply , thanks to a unique venture of the Maharashtra government and a Pune organisation with Japanese and Australian participation.

The people, mainly living in the Rajbunder village on the Arabian Sea island, 11 km from Gateway of India in Mumbai, will be provided solar powered lamps and electric ports for charging mobile phones, an official said Thursday.

At present, the villagers have been dependent on very limited electricity supply through diesel generators, said MMRDA Metropolitan Commissioner Ratnakar Gaikwad.

‘The project will be completed very soon and would help transform the lives of the people on the island,’ he said.

The Rs.10 million project has been jointly initiated by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) and the Science & Technology Park, Pune. While the MMRDA will foot 10 percent of the cost, 40 percent will be borne by the STP, which has engaged a leading Japanese designer, and the remaining 50 percent will come from the Australian government.

STP has entered into a technical collaboration with teh Australian Solar Gem company and engaged the renowned Japanese designer, Omura.

While Solar Gem will provide four solar power lamps to each household in Rajbunder, Omura will help design unique electricity poles which would suit the architecture of the caves on the world heritage site and also protect them from the menace of the monkeys living in the forests of the two square km island.

Posted by Vamban on May 13, 2010 @ 9:16 PM Filed under Business, National, Top Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry