Head of settlement committee: Government must appoint a planning minister
The request was heard during a convention dealing with planning the future of suburban Israel.
By OMRI RON
Gal Greenwald, head of the settlement committee, called on the government to appoint a Minister of Planning.“It’s time the Israeli government has a minister who deals with planning. We have no long term planning and that has to be sorted out,” Greenwald said. “In the end, this lack of planning damages our quality of life and causes needless expenses.”This was said during a convention organized by the Ministry of Agriculture’s planning authority which was held on Thursday in Tel Aviv. “If we take for example what’s being done with Sirkin in Petah-Tikva," Greenwald continued. "They decided to evacuate the military base, and that’s good, but what ends up happening is that they first settled the families there, and only then they plan the roads and access points there. That’s not how you do things. We must plan the future better.”Dr. Ruti Frum Arica, head of the Planning Authority in the Ministry of Agriculture, added and said: “There may not be a Minister of Planning in Israel, but there are a number of offices who deal with the subject. The problem is that they aren’t synchronized, so in the end the plans aren’t compatible and often contradictory to one another.”