Housing and Physical Planning

8. How the Situation Affects Women

8.1 Substandard housing

Substandard and inappropriate housing and environmentally degraded neighbourhood conditions affect women far more than men. Men go off to work for up to 14 hours a day. The women have to live and work in a boiling or freezing house; bring up their children without easily and sufficiently available water; see them play in foul water and excreta filled streets; look after them when they are ill without access to health care; and protect them from delinquency and drug abuse which the degraded physical, and hence social, environment in the absence of access to education, promotes.

8.2 Absence of tenure security

In a large number of informal settlements the absence of tenure security makes the residents especially vulnerable to evictions and/or police and musclemen harassment. To avoid this, the family is forced to seek protection of middlemen or informal sector entrepreneurs who in exchange employ female labour in the settlement (especially in the garment industry) at very exploitative rates. In rural areas it is common that women work free in the homes or farms of people or clans who have given them permission to squat on their lands. With rural land becoming increasingly inaccessible to low income groups, this trend is increasing. This is a major problem for low and lower middle income families, because with the breakup of clan affiliations and traditional structures, and weakening of the extended family, the need for cash has multiplied and as such a woman’s income is of considerable importance.

8.3 Physical security

In the new informal settlements clan and extended family ties are weak and becoming weaker. Crime and violence is increasing. These conditions are creating feelings of physical insecurity among women, especially among those women who are household heads. With urbanisation, breakup of traditional systems and new economic processes, the number of such women is increasing significantly.

9. Conclusions

The above paragraphs give a dismal picture of the housing situation in Pakistan. The picture is especially dismal because of the failure of the formal sector in delivering land and services to the lower income groups at a price that they can afford and the manner in which it effects women and children. However, there is some hope. Unconventional pilot projects, both in the rural and urban areas in Pakistan, have tackled the problem of housing and credit by developing strategies that are compatible with the sociology and economics of the urban and rural poor. An integral part of these strategies is community mobilisation, organisation, and management of development and its subsequent 0 and M; incremental development to suit the paying capacity of the beneficiaries; lower standards that are economical and can be upgraded; the induction of the informal sector into development; and the creation of a more equal relationship between the people and government institutions. Much of the inspiration for these strategies has come from the processes adopted by the informal sector to deal with housing issues. Two of these pilot projects are discussed briefly in paragraph 10.

However, the integration of these strategies into official planning processes requires first, their acceptance by the official policy makers, planners, politicians and bureaucrats. For this their orientation and training regarding these pilot experiments is necessary. Subsequently, institutional restructuring to make these strategies workable will also be required. In addition, changes also be required in the conventional manner in which professionals are trained and planning will have to be made subservient to larger social and economic realities rather than to the First World model and its existing institutional set-up.

The most important ingredient of developing appropriate policies and implementation procedures, not only for low income housing but for housing as a whole, is research, monitoring and evaluation, and extension of its results to all the actors in the housing drama, and based on feed-back, modification to policy and implementation procedures. Such research, monitoring and evaluation systems do not exist in Pakistan and their creation requires political support and professional commitment.

The housing situation in Pakistan brings out very clearly the need to establish an optimum relationship between need (as opposed to demand), resources (financial, managerial and technical present with all the actors in the housing drama) and standards, in an economy which does not produce the surplus required to subsidise housing effectively to make it affordable to its people. Furthermore, it has to be understood that all the three elements (need, resources and standards) are dynamic, and planning, if it has to be compatible with sociology and economics, has to accept and plan for this dynamism.

10. Two Pilot Projects

10.1 The Orangi Pilot Project (OPP)

The OPP is an NGO and has been in operation since 1980 in the Orangi Township in Karachi, whose population is over a million. From the very beginning the Project aimed at overcoming the constraints faced by the government in regularising and developing katchi abadis. The OPP has motivated the people of the township to organise themselves, collect money and thus finance, construct, manage and operate an underground sewerage system. Through research the OPt’ has lowered costs and made sanitation technology compatible to the sociology and economics of low income areas. Through extension it has taken the results of this research to the people. On the base established by the sanitation programme, a housing programme, consisting of advice to house owners and training and technical assistance to masons, component manufacturing yards and other actors in the informal sector have been initiated. These have lowered costs to an affordable level and improved housing design and construction. In addition a health programme and an environmental programme dealing with garbage and tree plantation are being carried out.

Due to the peoples involvement in upgrading their area and controlling finances, the relationship of the people with the local government has become a more equitable one, and this in turn has affected the manner in which the government development programmes are planned and implemented (especially the councillor identified projects) in Orangi. The OPP has already served more than 80,000 houses and the Orangi people have generated over 50 million rupees for development purposes. In addition, residents of other katchi abadis are replicating the OPP model with OPP assistance, and so is UNICEF in the Sukkur katchi abadis. The OPP has shown that katchi abadis in Pakistan can be upgraded without massive overheads and international funding and technical assistance. The OPPs programmes have led to a major involvement of women in the development process and the creation of a more congenial social and physical atmosphere for them and by them.

10.2 The TWA’s incremental housing scheme

The HDA’s incremental scheme began in February 1987. It has adopted the strategy of the land-grabbers informal development pattern. Unserviced plots are given to the poor at a price they can afford and without any cumbersome procedures. On-site screening processes of the applicants make speculation on these plots difficult, if not impossible. The owners are to pay for services over a 10 year period. De jure tenure rights will only be given after all services have been developed and paid for. The HDA has developed income generation programmes, an advisory service for housing and a loan scheme for both these activities, whose concept and procedures are compatible with the culture and repayment capacity of the residents. In addition, it has motivated the people to form organisations to finance and manage the development of, and to maintain and operate services and collect revenues for this purpose. As such the HDA has managed to overcome most of the constraints the formal sector faces in making land, infrastructure and credit available to low and lower middle income groups and at almost no additional overheads and costs. A major part of the HDA5 initiative has been to involve women in development.