Slums in Karachi: Cause and Current Situation
Sunday, November 16th, 2008
Written by: Saeed Zaman Shaikh
Poverty is not only having a low income but it is rather scarcity of essential capabilities and that comparative scarcity is related to income which can lead to absolute deprivation this is the argument which is placed by the Amritya Sen. He further says that income is not the only mechanism in extracting capabilities; there are many other social and cultural factors as well. He came up with the term ‘instrumental significance’ for low income whereas; he pointed out the various deficiencies as ‘intrinsically important’.
These intrinsically important factors could be disability and old age which require a bread winner to spend more on that old person or it could unequal distribution of resources or any other socially important reason but the conclusion is capability deprivations and result in migration from rural areas to urban areas for better opportunities.
When these people migrate to urban areas they don’t have proper shelter to cover themselves and they try to have their own shelters and which result in formation of new slum. The table below shows the population of slum areas in Karachi with respect to number of house holds
(Source: Mohib & Hassan. The Case of Karachi Pakistan)
Taking the year 1974 as a yardstick we can find out that, till 1986, the population augmented by 46.12% and the number of households increased by 50.35%, a little more than the population increase. Comparing this up to these last twenty six years from 1976, the total population increase has been 50.13%, whereas, the number of household in these slum areas have risen by 35.68%, having a low trend between 1986 and 2000. However, creating housing units is not only solution in accommodating the less affluent class of our society, rather maintenance issues should be sorted out before thinking of building new ones.
According to the survey by Mohib and Hassan, Karachi is in a need of 80,000 units per year but to negative feature of the uncorroborated problem is that the building permits is only to 27,000 annually. Often, the construction that takes place in the so called ‘Katchi abadis’, is sometimes undocumented and surface way to auxiliary densification. The housing units are developed or in other words maintained solely by the people themselves every year, government support or subsidies are not provided to them. Therefore, the residents of these units themselves pool in for maintenance such as sanitation, water and other necessities needed to make out their living and make both ends meet.
This has gone to the extent that they even have invested in the creation of schools in these slum areas. For instance, in Orangi Town, the population comprises of 1.2 million people and has schooling facilities as well, both private and public. Astonishingly, the private schools even in Orangi Town outnumber public schools. It has been found out that there are 509 private schools and 76 government schools, and out of these 71% of school age children are enrolled in private schools.
When it comes to the health sector, even here, the private clinics out number public clinics with them being 468 and the government clinics having as low a number as 18. They are being run by health visitors and qualified doctors who work both pro bono and for some pay as well. Other health facilities are run by NGO’s in this area.
According to a survey of Ghaziabad (settlement in West Karachi) conducted by Mohib and Hassan, income of 20 households was verified, and it was found out that average income of these households was ranging from Rs. 4,500 to Rs. 6000 with average per capita income being as low as Rs. 500. Highest household income had been Rs. 28,000 and the lowest had been Rs. 1,500 was is extremely low not just as compared to the rising cost of living but according to being a resident of the slums.
This frequently turn into complicated situation to meet the expense of a life when on average the number of children in a residence is 9.5 as habitually families have four children and above. This is also shored up by the fact that the birth rate in Orangi is 40.8 per 1000 people. With this surged birth rate, there will be a need of more and more housing units to lodge these people without merely getting their living conditions improved. The sewage, water and electricity problems continue more often in these areas.
KAIRP has been a significant curriculum for the enhancement and regularization for the slums of Karachi. For the accomplishment of this curriculum, a loan of $ 7.3 million was taken from the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank in 2000 although the inhabitants would deny it. The governments representative have say that relevant work has been completed in slum areas and leases have been issued to 108,245 housing units as compared to a total of 415,000 units. However, there is no declaration of the particulars accessible for any work conceded out through these councilor/MNA/MPA funds because of the nonexistence of monitoring and there is a elevated weight age that these funds may have been distorted. These slum areas are not openly connected with the city infrastructure for the reason that of which improvement programs fail. Saeed Zaman Shaikh
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