After a gap of several years, the city’s planning agency Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority has gone in for a massive recruitment drive to fill up its vacant posts.
The bulk of vacancies are in the planning section of the agency and the recruitment drive, staff say, would help in more efficient and quicker disposal of pending work by the CMDA.
The agency on Sunday called for applications for 176 posts and 60 of them are in the planning section, staff said.
Post the 11-storey building collapse in Mugalivakkam that killed 61 people in June last year, the CMDA went into an overdrive inspecting high rises as well as multi-storey buildings under construction. However, due to an acute short of agency staff, the complete task of inspecting all buildings took a long time, sources said.
Sources in the planning agency also added that they had hired experts and even tried recruiting professionals on a temporary basis to expedite the work of inspections, but that was not enough. Officials did not confirm the exact number of vacancies in the planning wing.
However, the officials said that even by modest estimates, they required no less than 50 people in the section.
“This is a welcome move and this should have been done long back. The CMDA has always been understaffed. The centre is now talking of smart cities and Chennai should not lag behind in proper planning. All plan sanction and related tasks like inspections should be done quickly and lack of staff for the delays should no longer be an excuse,” said R.Kumar, Managing Director, Navin Housing and Properties.