Victims of forced evictions struggle to survive

Pervaiz, 13, has not been to school for more than seven months after his family was relocated to Taiser Town, a new settlement of 95,000 people outside the industrial city of Karachi. Most of Taiser Town's residents were forcibly evicted from their homes in Karachi's Lyari area, which was demolished to make way for the controversial Lyari Expressway. Pervaiz's father has been left jobless, meaning his family can no longer afford to send him to school. "He [Pervaiz's father] worked as an office cleaner near Lyari before, but now he cannot go so far early in the morning to work," Pervaiz explained. Pervaiz's plight is not rare. According to the Karachi-based Urban Resource Centre (URC), an NGO that has studied evictions in Karachi since 1992, more than 64 percent of school-aged boys and almost 99 percent of girls forced to move to Taiser Town were taken out of school by their cash-strapped families. Nearly 200,000 people have been displaced since work began on the expressway in January 2002. A number of injuries and deaths have also been reported after people refused to move for the bulldozers. Karachi authorities bulldozed more than 3,490 houses in the first five months of this year to make way for the road, funded by a Kuwait-based company, which aims to relieve traffic congestion. Critics of the project, including leading town planners such as architect Arif Hassan, believe that the human cost is too high a price to pay. The URC said most of the 50,000 people affected had not received proper resettlement and compensation. Only a small number had been relocated to the Hawkesbay site - another set-up for those evicted. Moreover, media reports have suggested that some houses that did not fall in the expressway's path had also been demolished as part of a land grab. Hawkesbay, located by the sea, has few basic amenities and is 25km outside central Karachi – meaning that residents who move there effectively lose their jobs, access to healthcare and other facilities. Taiser Town is 30km away from the city. Habiba Gill, a factory worker, said it was increasingly difficult to commute. "We spend over Rs 50 [nearly US $1] daily on transport. My husband and I used to go into Karachi to work." She said the added cost meant they could not afford to send their three children, all girls, to school and they could "only rarely" afford to buy vegetables. Muhammad Younis, URC's director, said its studies had shown that about 30 percent of skilled workers who shifted lost their jobs permanently, while others became jobless for a shorter period. The provision of housing is a growing problem across Pakistan, most notably in big cities like Karachi, which has a population of nearly 14 million. More than half its residents live in unregulated settlements where piped water, sewage or other facilities are rarely available. The Lyari eviction issue has drawn attention at the highest levels. Miloon Kothari, the UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, said in May that there should be an "immediate halt to all forced evictions" in Karachi, adding there was a lack of public participation, inadequate relocation sites and excessive use of force during evictions. UN guidelines require comprehensive impact assessments in advance of evictions and written notification to all those affected. As the controversy continues, dislocated people struggle to resurrect shattered lives.