KINGSTON, Jamaica - The Government is implementing a streetlight energy saving initiative, with the commencement of a pilot project, to be undertaken in three parishes over the next six months.

The initiative is aimed at significantly reducing the cost to maintain the country’s approximately 93,000 street lights totalling upwards of $2 billion per annum.

Project activities got underway in Osbourne Store, Clarendon, on Tuesday (January 8), with the installation of the first set of solar-powered light emitting diode (LED) fixtures in that community.

Local Government and Community Development Minister, Noel Arscott, whose Ministry has portfolio responsibility for street lights, said the pilot phase will see some 5000 LED panels being installed in Clarendon as well as sections of St Catherine and Kingston and St. Andrew.

Additionally, he said the phase will also see the Ministry’s offices at Hagley Park Road in Kingston, being retrofitted with energy saving solutions.

Installation of the LED fixtures, which is being done at no cost to the government, is facilitated through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Local Government ministry and Green Energy RG, which was signed in 2011.

The MoU made provisions for the testing and implementation of alternative energy technology solutions for local government facilities, and comes in the wake of a recently completed energy audit of the Ministry’s offices as well as public spaces under its purview.