CITY HALL is monitoring the public lighting on the Karamunsing flyover, near the National Audit Department Sabah building on Jalan Tuaran and in one part of Dah Yeh Villa to ensure that the roads are adequately illuminated at night.
A section of the main road between the roundabout Bukit Nenas and the junction to the Kota Kinabalu Court Complex has twice been shrouded in darkness over the past few weeks.
Several streetlights on the pavement outside the Audit Department building manifested a strobe effect for several hours on a Tuesday night earlier this month, while those on Lorong Kenawai 4 have been functioning intermittently.
A technician checks the mechanisms inside the control panel for the lights on Jalan Bertingkat Bukit Nenas.
The individuals, who highlighted these irregularities to Hotline, hoped City Hall would do more to safeguard the wellbeing of drivers who used these stretches after dark.
A spokesman for the agency’s Engineering Department said its electrical contractor was informed about their grievances.
“His staff found that a 6.5metre-span between Jalan Bertingkat Bukit Nenas and Jalan Kolam was pitch black,” he said.
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“They traced the problem with to a problem with the ‘contactors’ servicing the lights here.”
A “contactor” was a type of switch for repeatedly opening and closing an electric circuit, he explained.
Remedial action was taken on the spot to put new 60amp “contactors” in place of the faulty ones, according to him.
He said these technicians later tested the cables inside each of the poles to confirm that they were working as they should.
Where the strobing lights near the Audit Department building was concerned, the spokesman acknowledged receipt of the short dashboard-cam video, taken by the complainant, which showed these amenities blinking repeatedly.
He said the contractor kept the affected amenities along Kilometre 2.5 Jalan Tuaran under observation for a period afterwards but failed to find anything amiss with the lights.
“It is likely that the strobe effect may have been an isolated occurrence which could have resulted from some transient fault with the power supply to the lights.
“We have enlisted the assistance of Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd (SESB) to determine the basis of our suspicions.”
In the case of the lights in Dah Yeh Villa, the spokesman said a check of Lorong Kenawai 4 revealed that some of the lighting fixtures were damaged.
He said repairs were made on the spot, with the contractor’s workers also installing new 150watt sodium bulbs, as well new “ballasts”, as well as “ignitors”, where needed.
“A sky-master was deployed to facilitate efforts to have the lights restored.”
He explained that a “ballast” regulated the electrical current to the lanterns and provided sufficient voltage to start the lanterns.
An “ignitor”, on the other hand, functioned as a starter to increase the initial voltage to make the lamp light up, according to him.
“Our contractor kept an eye on the housing road for a week afterwards, during which time the contractor confirmed that the supply to the lights remained stable.”
