Special report on informal housing

At first sight it looks like a river of plastic bags; on closer inspection, the bags merely form the top layer of a stream of thick sewage - green-black, thick, and virtually stagnant. This open drain has earned the locality along the coastline in the port city of Karachi the name Machar Colony, or mosquito colony. About 200,000 people live on either side of the open sewer which discharges directly into the sea. Saifullah Khan, whose unfinished brick home is precariously built on the edge of the open sewer, pulls up his sleeve to show the scab from an injection. "I went to the doctor yesterday because of a tummy ache," he complains. "Every other day one or other of my children is sick," he told IRIN. "Look at our water supply," he added, pointing to the plastic pipes floating in the sewage. Each pipe emanates from clusters of water pumping gadgets placed at intervals on either side of the drain. Each pump is hooked to the main water pipeline that supplies water to the colony across the road. There is no water supply directly to Machar Colony. Water is bought from one of the 'businessmen' who have installed the pumps. "We pay 100 rupees [about US $2] per hour if we use the pump," said Haji Azmatullah, another resident. Twenty-litre jerry cans are also available from water-sellers at three rupees each. Those unable to afford water from these two sources carry their jerry cans to the Colony across the road to fill water from the hand pumps installed there. It's nearly two kilometres of walking each way. Machar Colony has electricity connections, but residents say they only have electricity four hours out of 24. The only facility they do have is the drain, but there are no pipes to transfer sewage from homes into the drain. While some residents have optimistically installed flushable toilets and latrines in their homes, and even drainage pipes, most of these empty into the narrow lanes which remain inundated with sewage water. There are more flies about than mosquitoes. "That's because flies are on duty during the day and mosquitoes take over vigil during the night," joked Azmatullah. HALF KARACHI'S POPULATION LIVE IN SHANTIES Conditions in Machar Colony may be particularly squalid, but the locality can perhaps derive comfort from the fact that it is not alone in its misery. According to government figures, there are 539 squatter settlements across Karachi, home to 2.5 million of the city's population. These figures do not reflect an accurate picture, however, because they date back to 1985, which was the cut-off date announced by the government for the recognition of squatter settlements, locally known as Katchi Abadis. Settlements that had already been in existence prior to 23rd March 1985 are deemed eligible for regularisation by the Katchi Abadi Authority. Since then, many more have been added to the metropolis. According to estimates based on scientific methods of calculation, "in Karachi alone, a city of 12 million, more than 50 percent of the population lives in Katchi Abadis", said Arif Hasan, an architect and urban development consultant.

Sewage pipes empty out into the unpaved streets in the absence of a drainage system in Machar Colony

Even though Karachi is Pakistan's largest metropolis, and the most urbanised, squatter settlements are not just a Karachi phenomenon. All the country's provincial capitals host urban slums, and Katchi Abadis have also sprung up in larger towns and cities across the provinces. According to recent statistics available at the Urban Resource Centre in Karachi, there are almost half a million Katchi Abadi dwellers in Balochistan, nearly 1 million in the North West Frontier province, over 7 million in the country's most populous Punjab Province, and more than 5 million in Sindh. SHANTIES A GROWING PROBLEM In Pakistan, the first of such settlements can be traced back to the partition of India in 1947. Muslim refugees poured into the new Muslim state, which was unprepared and ill-equipped to provide them with shelter. Some occupied houses vacated by Hindus who had migrated to India. But those not fortunate enough to find a home ready built, set up temporary dwellings wherever they could find empty space. Pakistan's first census in 1951 revealed that of the 33.8 million population, 6.5 million were migrants to the country. Most of these new citizens were living in shanties concentrated in urban areas. Karachi alone received 600,000 immigrants. Thus began the phenomenon of the Katchi Abadi in Pakistan. Declining rural livelihoods also brought about a migration as villages in droves sought jobs in emerging industry in the cities. Urban infrastructure was unable to cope with their growing numbers, resulting in the construction of more informal dwellings. According to one estimate, Katchi Abadis grow at an annual rate of 9 percent, while the yearly urban growth rate in the country is 4.8 percent. This rapid expansion is not without peril, for such makeshift settlements provide little by way of proper infrastructure. "The Katchi Abadi phenomenon is indicative of the Pakistan government's failure to meet the housing needs of its citizens," said Tasneem Ahmed Siddiqui, the director-general of the Sindh Katchi Abadi Authority (SKAA). As a civil servant who has spent almost his entire professional life tackling the issue of squatter settlements, Siddiqui admits that where the government has failed to deliver, the country's informal sector has succeeded, albeit imperfectly, to fulfil the citizens' fundamental needs for shelter. "Call them the land mafia or land grabbers, but these people scout out government land in the city, occupy it, and plan it out the way the government would plan it, and start selling plots," explained Siddiqui. This parallel economy flourishes under a nexus of corrupt bureaucrats and land-grabbers euphemistically known as developers. A RESPONSE TO GOVERNMENT'S FAILURE Whatever the means, Hasan believes that the informal sector has at least provided a solution. "Why are Katchi Abadis the problem?" he asks. "They are in fact the solution. They are the informal sector's response to a housing crisis that the government has been unable to manage. If this informal sector didn't exist, people in Karachi would be sleeping on the streets like in Mumbai." The biggest plus point of this informal housing economy, says Hasan, is that "they provide housing (mainly plots of land for building) at an affordable rate and through a process the poor can follow". By comparison, land provided by the government is a minuscule fraction of the need, costs a lot more than the poor can afford, and can only be acquired after a complex and lengthy procedure of applications, balloting, and infrastructure development which can take up to a decade. Initially, migrants arriving in the city would build a shelter wherever they found space. That still happens, but more and more squatters opt for the more planned settlements where water supply, sanitation and electricity is promised and usually delivered soon after occupation.

The drainage arrangements are as makeshift as the homes

As more and more of the city's economy has developed in the informal sector, the supply of housing has been refined over the years. Now there is a method to this madness, and Katchi Abadis are professionally planned and laid out, despite still being classified as illegal settlements. Unscrupulous businessmen, well aware of the commercial potential of the housing sector, have adopted a well-planned system that apes the government's approach to housing schemes, complete with layouts and identification of plots. What makes the system far more successful in this parallel economy is that it does away with the bureaucratic red tape. If the informal sector has learned from the government the process of planning a residential settlement, the government has in turn used the informal sector's delivery-on-demand approach with great success. A CREATIVE COMPROMISE Khuda ki Basti, or God's settlement, is a government initiative combining the best of the formal and informal sectors. It demonstrates that if there is a will, the government can easily find a way to fulfil the housing needs of Katchi Abadi dwellers. The project was Siddiqui's brainchild from the time when he was posted as director of the development authority of Hyderabad, a city about 160 km from Karachi, and Sindh's second-largest metropolis. Having watched a burgeoning population gobble up recreational areas in his home town of Sukkur in central Sindh, Siddiqui was acutely aware of the housing crisis in the country's urban areas. Thus, when he saw that a housing scheme, Gulshan-e Shahbaz, located on the highway between Karachi and Hyderabad was virtually vacant while four shantytowns inhabited by workers employed at a nearby industrial area sprawled beside it, Siddiqui decided to offer land in the housing scheme to the local Katchi Abadi residents. The workers needed a place to stay, which neither the factory owners nor the government had bothered to provide. And only 10,000 of the 70,000 plots demarcated in the 5,500-acre housing scheme had been sold. Siddiqui used his clout to sanction land within the housing scheme for a low-income settlement and created Khuda ki Basti. It offered landless squatters the opportunity to purchase plots of land at affordable rates. Once secure that they had legal deeds, the squatters set about building their homes. Here again, Siddiqui adopted the informal sector's approach to construction. Rather than requiring landowners to present detailed building maps and designs for their homes before construction, he encouraged them to begin construction, offering technical assistance if they needed it. A home would usually begin life as a jhuggi, or makeshift shelter, but as the family prospered, the katchi (temporary) dwelling metamorphoses into a pukka (concrete) structure with an air of permanence. Another approach adopted from the informal sector was to make basic services such as water and roads available as soon as the occupants had settled in. This was in contrast to the government's policy under which water and sewage lines as well as roads are usually built before settlement. The problem this creates is that without occupation and usage of these facilities, sewage and water lines get blocked, and roads begin to degrade with disuse. "Based on our research and experience, services should be linked with habitation," says Siddiqui. NO LOANS FOR THE POOR Hasan says unless the poor are given access to resources that will enable them to own land and build homes, the phenomenon of the Katchi Abadi will flourish. "If you want to solve the problem of housing for the poor, you have to make money available to low-income communities to purchase land," asserts Hasan.

A view of Machar Colony from the main road

"The poor usually want a small loan to lay a roof or instal a latrine," Hasan points out. "But there is no concept of small loans for the poor in this country," Hasan said. Whereas loans for the poor might be a pipe dream, regularisation under the Katchi Abadi legislation does provide squatters with some relief. The SKAA has been quite successful in not only in giving squatters the opportunity of owning the property which they have spent money building and developing, but regularisation also makes it incumbent on the authority to develop other basic infrastructure and facilities. Siddiqui explains that in the case of the planned squatter settlements, residents have already paid for the land and other services. In such cases, the authority is lenient in fixing the price of the lease to the property. The charge is more a fee for issuing a lease than the cost of the land. The Sindh Katchi Abadis Act 1987 defines Machar Colony as an illegal settlement on government land without security of land tenure, which has been earmarked for regularisation and improvement. Under this legislation, Machar Colony has the right to be developed, improved and regularised by the government's SKAA. It can be supplied with water and sanitation, a proper network of lanes, streets and roads can be built, electricity can be provided, and its sewage lines can be connected to the main drainage system so that waste can be properly disposed of. But none of this has happened yet in Machar Colony. This is because the settlement is situated on land belonging to the Karachi Port Trust, which is unwilling to issue the no-objection certificate to allow the SKAA to regularise the settlement and develop it. While the Katchi Abadis Act supports the regularisation of such settlements, it cannot override the will of the legal owners of the land, who must agree to the regularisation before ownership of the occupied land can be offered to the residents. Even though legislation now exists to regularise and develop squatter settlements into decent habitable areas equipped with basic infrastructure and facilities, the government remains unable to help localities like Machar Colony. A MINOR SUCCESS STORY Residents of Machar Colony could learn from another squatter settlement in Karachi, Orangi Township. A sprawling cluster of Abadis spread over 10,000 ha, Orangi is undoubtedly the city's largest Katchi Abadi in population terms as well. Over 1 million people call Orangi home. It is also among the oldest, having been around since 1965. Thanks to a development guru named Akhtar Hameed Khan, Orangi was able to clean up its act with a proper drainage system that has provided residents with a healthy environment and a much improved quality of life. Built under Khan's trailblazing and exemplary Orangi Pilot Project, the sanitation system reduced the infant mortality rate from 130 per 1,000 in 1984 to 37 in 1991. Once their medical expenditure was considerably reduced, Orangi residents were encouraged to do more for their community.

Upstream of Essa Nagri is Welfare Colony. Where was once an open drain (like the one in Essa Nagri), there is now this paved lane. Essa Nagri will also look something like this once the drain is covered

Empowered by the improvement in their living conditions, Orangi residents used the positive energy generated by the spirit of self-help to improve other aspects of their life as well. They spent money on improving education and health. Home schools are common in Orangi, so the children are better educated than those in other localities. Through the introduction of group discussions on population planning, demanded by the women, more than half of Orangi's married women plan their pregnancies as compared to just 7 percent in other communities. Women also pay for regular classes on disease prevention and hygiene. The project has also established a revolving loan fund to finance small businesses, which are thriving in every lane of Orangi. It is a community transformed. The people have been empowered by their role in solving their most fundamental problem - drainage and sanitation - and their pride and prosperity is clearly visible. Though the regularisation of Katchi Abadis is a giant leap forward from the times when squatter settlements were considered ugly warts on the urban landscape, with removal through bulldozing being the only treatment, it is not a permanent solution to the housing needs of Pakistan's poor. Hasan says Pakistan has to revive the concept of social housing. "Urban planning in Pakistan has been nothing but housing schemes for the rich and commercial plazas," he emphasised. He recalled a time when land, in theory, was an asset used to serve the needs of the poor. "Now it is a commodity. Its value determines its usage, which is the antithesis of urban planning as we have known it," he pointed out. The result of this urban development volte face is the continued proliferation of Katchi Abadis with all their associated health, social and economic drawbacks.