ITANAGAR, 1 Feb: Members of the Arunachal Pradesh Town Planners’ Forum (APTPF) on Saturday drew the attention of Urban Affairs Minister Balo Raja towards the shortage of posts of town planners in the state.
The APTPF members, led by its general secretary Phuntso Gyaltsen, informed the minister that there are 47 notified urban centres and two urban local bodies (Itanagar and Pasighat), which are being managed by one director, two town planners, six permanent and two contractual assistant town planners (ATP), and 1+ (3 vacant) town planning assistants (TPA), which makes a total 12 technical staffers only in the town planning department.
“These 12 technical staffers look after 28 districts of the state. Alarmingly, each ATP oversees the planning process of 4-5 districts, in addition to their regular responsibilities in the department, which leads to heavy workload. Such understaffing situation highlights the urgent need for creation of additional posts to strengthen the state’s town planning policies’ implementation,” the forum’s members said.
They also claimed that “not a single recruitment/examination or promotion has been conducted by the department of town planning in the past 13 years.” The forum stated that “the administrative reforms department had approved the creation of 10 posts of assistant town planners and 10 posts of town planning assistants during the 2011-2012 financial year. However, the proposal has been pending since 2019 at the finance department, awaiting a recommendation from the empowered committee.”
Raja on his part assured the APTPF members that more posts, which have been approved by the administrative reforms department, would be created.
