The COVID-19 pandemic has paralyzed everyday life in the city. However, street lighting must work, as does the power grid or medical services.

“For city services, it needs to be business as usual, even in these difficult times. We can hardly afford to have a half of streetlamps out of order as a result of the state of emergency,” says City Councilor Jan Chabr who is responsible for street lighting in the city.

The city's 135 thousand lampposts are serviced by city-owned company Technologie hlavního města Prahy (THMP), which has taken necessary measures to ensure continuity of its operations and, most importantly, safety of its employees.  THMP CEO Tomáš Jílek said that upon reports on the first cases in Europe, he had requested that his employees returning from affected regions work from home for two weeks. “The situation is much more complicated today. Employees whose position allows, work remotely. For others, such as controllers and engineers, who must be physically present at work, we are doing our best to ensure safety,” he explained. Employees wear face masks in the workplace, have hand sanitizers at their disposal and the workplaces are disinfected every 3 or 4 hours. “For those who cannot go to work by car, we have arranged other means of transport so that they do not need to use transit during the coronavirus outbreak,” he added.

Management and maintenance of street lighting in the capital city therefore continues as usual. “Our control room operates 24/7. Over the past few days, we have noticed a slight decrease in the number of failure reports, but this is understandable given the situation,” says Tomáš Jílek, adding that the company's two field service centers operate in the standard mode. “On Wednesday, we carried out a luminosity check which we are expected to perform on a regular basis under our contract with the city. We discovered only 6 faulty lamps out of the 805 we checked, a result we can be happy with,” he noted.

“I am happy that we are able to provide highly professional services even in this difficult situation while observing all preventive measures. I hope the situation will soon be over and allow us to devote the necessary resources to carry on with all the projects that we have started,” concluded City Councilor Jan Chabr.