News

Volume 7 Issue 9 - May 01, 2010

Urban Development Sub Group on access guidelines likely to miss deadline

D.N.I.S. News Network, India: The initial enthusiasm surrounding the Sub Group formed by the Ministry of Urban Development to harmonise the existing access guidelines seems to have lost steam in the last few weeks. Till now, the Group has been able to finalise only the Table of Contents and the Chapter on Anthropometrics. For the last 2 meetings, the Group has been debating on the Chapter on Design Elements without making much breakthrough.

Another problem that is plaguing the Group is that members are not being able to meet as often as they need to. Much of the energy seems to be wasted on finding agreeable time slots for ALL members. This after it was initially decided that if one or two members would not be able to attend a meeting, the others would go ahead and send the deliberations of the meeting through E-mail to which they could respond!

D.N.I.S. had earlier reported how the Ministry of Urban Development had formed a Committee to harmonise the three existing guidelines on access in October, 2009 and then on March 15 this year, a Sub Group was formed to draft a fresh set of guidelines within May 2010. At the pace at which the Sub Group is moving, end of May looks like a difficult deadline.