MHADA to appoint full-time planners

To come up with better, professionally designed housing projects for the common man in the future, the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) has decided to appoint full-time planners.

Planning homes: After MHADA received several letters from people suggesting that its future buildings should be constructed in a more planned manner, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan has instructed the authority to appoint full-time planners. Representation pic

The decision was taken after instructions from Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan.

No outsourcing
MHADA, which uses a lottery system for the allotment of affordable homes it creates in the city and elsewhere in the state, was so far making up for its lack of in-house planners by outsourcing the job to private parties.

Sources in MHADA said that the authority had received several letters from people suggesting its future buildings should be constructed in a more planned manner.

Some people had also been saying that the buildings constructed by MHADA were not up to the mark and there was a need to plan upcoming projects in such a manner that these became a brand of quality.

Workload on rise
Two weeks ago, the CM instructed MHADA that it should appoint full-time planners, and yesterday the issue was discussed in the meeting of heads of department of MHADA.

"Day by day, work at MHADA is increasing and we are coming up with new projects, and so we have decided that we will be appointing full-time planners, who will work on future MHADA projects to ensure better planning," MHADA Vice-President Satish Gavai said.

MHADA sources said that at first planners would be appointed at the level of the umbrella body, after which a decision will be taken to appoint planners for the

various MHADA boards, including Mumbai, Pune, Konkan, Nashik, Aurangabad, Amravati and Nagpur.u00a0