Street lights guide road users during the day

Dubai

Like most of his Grade 11 classmates, Mohit Talreja was bereft of a weekend as he was heading to Dubai to attend a private tuition class. He was travelling along King Faisal Raod, in Sharjah on a Friday morning. To his surprise, he saw the street lights shining bright on the roads. It was quite a mundane sight, except it was at 7.45am when the sun was “gleaming bright”.

“The lights were on till the Double Cola road, in Sharjah Industrial Area 5. I thought that maybe because it is a Friday, the lights were left switched on by mistake. The fact that the same continued on the next day left me stunned,” Talreja recollects.

The student from The Millennium School, Dubai admits that he has seen street lights on at Buhaira Corniche some months back, too. Talreja ponders over the colossal power wastage.

“Imagine the amount of electricity consumed by all the street lights on the road! Additionally, imagine the amount of carbon footprint generated by these lights. Isn’t this a national waste?” he exclaims.

Further, Talreja reiterates on the efforts they take at home to conserve power.

“My father pays around Dh400 per month for electricity and we take utmost caution in conserving electricity at home. When we can do it domestically, Sharjah authorities must walk the extra mile to conserve power for the entire emirate,” said Talreja.

He further stressed on the fact that the availability of natural resources is inversely proportional to its consumption.

“The UAE has a limited stock of natural resources with a very high energy consumption rate. It is therefore the duty of all of us to reduce our carbon footprint within the assimilating capacity of Mother Nature,” he stated. “If on Earth Hour, a large amount of energy is conserved by switching the lights off for one hour, then how much amount of energy would be conserved by switching the street lights off in the morning when not required? I request the concerned authorities to take this matter into consideration as soon as possible.”

— The writer is an intern with the Readers Desk at Gulf News.