Housing and Physical Planning

a) Reasons for the small scale of development

The provincial and local governments lack the financial resources to acquire land for development. Therefore, only where state land is available in appropriate locations can development take place. The availability of state land, however, in the Punjab and NWFP is diminishing rapidly. Cost of land on the open market can be between Rs 100,000 per acre on the outskirts of a town committee settlement to Rs 500,000 per acre in Lahore. Even if local bodies could acquire land at this price it would be unaffordable to the major target group since the land cost of a 3 marla plot would be as high as Rs 10,000 and with the development cost added to it, it would be as high as Rs 16,000. In addition, private land holdings are small and land assembly has to take place before a scheme can be floated. Since the shelving of the 1973 Land Acquisition Act, land acquisition is not an easy job for the development authorities and land assembly can take up to 6 to 10 years.

In addition, the implementing agencies, especially in the intermediate and smaller towns, do not have the technical and managerial capacity and capability to manage large projects or even plan and market small ones.

b) Reasons for missing the target group

Affordability: Plots as developed by the urban development agencies are far too expensive for the poor to afford. Where state land is available the cost of a 3 marla plot would be Rs 7,500 (Rs 900 for land and Rs 6,600 for development). Where state land is not available the land cost minus development for a similar plot would be four to ten times this cost. The payment for land and development is normally made by the purchaser in three equal installments, within a year of the announcement of the scheme, and although low income groups may be able to pay the first installment, they cannot pay the 2 subsequent ones in so short a span of time.

Procedures: The procedures for applying for state developed land are long and cumbersome and mean filling forms, visiting banks and government offices, following newspapers and waiting for results of the ballot. These procedures are not compatible with the culture of the urban poor.

Time lag between announcement of scheme and its development: This time lag can be anything between 4 to 10 years. The poor on the other hand want land immediately.

Speculation: The difference between the allotment price of a small plot and its market value is considerable. So, most of the smaller plots are held for speculation by middlemen, developers and the more affluent sections of the population who benefit from the subsidies that are built into these schemes. These plots lie empty for years on end.

4.3 Policy requirements

Keeping the above in view, the national housing programme in the urban sector primarily needs the delivery of land to the seventieth percentile and below population at a maximum down payment of Rs 4,000 and an average monthly payment of Rs 150 over a three year period. For the population between the 70th and 50th percentile this could be increased to a down payment of Rs. 7,500 and an average monthly payment of Rs 300 over a three period. In addition, it needs the development of strategies that discourage speculation and provide loans for local authorities to acquire land on the open market, and develop infrastructure which can be repaid by the purchasers in installments.

4.4 Repercussions of the failure of state policies

a) The development of katchi abadis and informal settlements

As the urban poor cannot have access to formally developed land they house themselves in katchi abadis and through the informal subdivision of agricultural land (ISAL). Both the arrangements are compatible with their economics and sociology. The reasons are given below.

Affordability: Katchi abadis develop through illegal subdivision and squatting on government land. Currently the cost of a plot in a developing katchi abadi is between Rs 1,500 and Rs 6,000. As no services are provided the plot is affordable. Since the process of acquiring and subdividing state land for katchi abadi formation has now institutionalised itself and carries with it a high de facto tenure security, it is becoming increasingly inaccessible to the very poor among the low income groups.

No study of the ISAL market has been made so far. Indications are that land is affordable in these subdivisions only because the land used for low income settlements is either waste land or ecologically unsuitable for habitation. In the later case, it may be in old quarries or may be prone to flooding. In both cases no services are provided. Even this land is now becoming expensive with the result that the informal subdivisions are becoming smaller and smaller so as to be affordable and the access roads are becoming narrower. In the process environmental conditions are deteriorating.

Immediate occupancy and no cumbersome procedures: Land in the informal settlements and katchi abadis can be occupied immediately without fulfilling any complicated formalities. Protection from eviction in the katchi abadis in the initial stages is provided by the sub-divider and so is water through bowzers or hand pumps where this is possible.

Speculation: All informal settlement plot buyers are required by the sub-divider to build on their plots within a week of purchase. If this does not happen then their allotment is canceled and money forfeited. This makes speculation next to impossible.

Services: Most katchi abadis and ISAL acquire services incrementally through lobbying, self-help and councilor funded projects. The process may take up to 20 years.

Due to the development of informal settlements about 15 million, or 40 percent, of Pakistan’s urban population lives in slums and katchi abadis. In addition, these settlements are increasing at a far faster rate than all the settlements developed and upgraded through the formal sector programmes. For example, in Karachi the katchi abadis have grown at a rate of 10 percent¹ between 1986 and 1989, against a total Karachi growth rate of 4.4 percent. If this trend continues, over 65 percent of Pakistan’s urban population will be living in semi-serviced or unserviced slums and katchi abadis by the year 2010.

Health and education services are also provided by the informal sector in the informal settlements. These are of a very low standard and hence affordable.

Housing: Housing in katchi abadis and ISAL is carried out through the informal sector. Contractors, masons and building component manufacturing yards give low income groups advice, credit and materials (all substandard in nature) for house building purposes. There are no professional inputs (architects, engineers etc.) in this process. The result is that the standard of housing is poor, not because of financial constraints, but because of a bad use of resources, poor skills and low awareness levels of the house owners.

b) Government responses

The government has failed to provide an alternative for low income groups to katchi abadis and ISAL settlements. Having recognised this it has initiated a katchi abadi improvement and regularisation programme. Through the programme informal settlements on state land can be given tenure security and services provided they pay for it. A similar programme is being initiated for the urban slums where people do have tenure security. Both programmes are described below.

The government of the Punjab and Sindh through their Directorate of Katchi Abadis and other local government development organisations are in the process of developing a slum upgrading programme. Local councils in the Punjab have been asked to prepare PC-Is for slum upgrading schemes.

Many slums, most of them developed through ISAL, acquire on site infrastructure through councilor-funded projects and community- financed and implemented schemes. The same is true of many katchi abadis. However, these works are unplanned, badly implemented and many fall into disuse or are washed away in the rains. In addition, the secondary infrastructure which links the on-site infrastructure to the trunk infrastructure is never developed. This causes enormous problems, mainly of sanitation and health, for the residents of the slums. It also prevents them from being taxed as they do not use the trunk infrastructure of the city.

There are 2,322 katchi abadis in Pakistan with a total population of 5,504,380. These are in the process of being developed and regularised under the Katchi Abadi Programme since 1978. However, the programme is facing a number of problems which are listed below².

Slow pace of the programmes: The pace of work under the Katchi Abadi Programme has been slow. Only 13.85 percent of the households have been regularised since 1978 and 22.41 percent of abadis have been or are in the process of being developed. The reasons for the slow pace of work are given as lack of funds heavy government subsidy in development along with lac1 of recovery of development charges, which prevents funds from revolving, and lack of community involvement in the programme. To keep up with the increasing backlog of katchi abadis 100,000 households annually should benefit from the programme. However, only 20,000 houses annually are upgraded under the present programme ³.

Non-recovery of development and regularisation charges: So far Rs 668.44 million have been spent on the programme. On this, Rs 225.75 million is expected to be recovered. This is because 50 percent of the development charge is borne by the government in the Punjab and 50 percent by the beneficiary. If the beneficiary pays the total charge in one go he is given a further 50 percent rebate both in Sindh and the Punjab.

In Punjab, which has the most successful katchi abadi development programme in Pakistan, 3.5 million people or about 500,000 households live in katchi abadis. With a yearly budget of Rs 250 million only, about 50,000 households could benefit from the programme yearly. This would take the programme over 10 years to complete and that too if recoveries for land and development charges could be effected. So far, recoveries have been poor. For example, the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) has spent Rs 200 million on the programme and recovered only Rs 10 million. Recoveries of the provincial katchi abadi directorate have, however, been marginally more satisfactory⁴.

Capacity of programme implementing agencies: Although funds are given as one of the reasons for the slow pace of work, only Rs 200 million of the Rs 400 million allotted every year for the programme are actually utilised. This points towards a lack of capacity on the part of the programme implementing agencies to carry out the work.

Secondary infrastructure: Although the development programme manages to develop on-site infrastructure it fails to provide secondary infrastructure to link the abadis with the town’s or city’s trunk and communication network.