Squatters win temporary reprieve

Pakistan’s squatters, known locally as katchi abadi dwellers, won a temporary reprieve recently after Chief Executive General Pervez Musharraf announced that deserving katchi abadi dwellers who have no alternative shelter should not be summarily evicted. The move brings into focus the growing housing problem facing millions of urban Pakistanis - a complex issue now raising serious concern for the government. “We welcome this move as an extremely positive development,” Nasreen Azhar, a human rights activist for the cause, told IRIN in the capital, Islamabad. “This is the first time the government is looking at this with a long-term perspective,” she said. According to a recent report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) entitled “The Right to Housing of the Urban Poor”, katchi abadi settlements represent a major challenge to the authorities. Conservative estimates indicate that 40 percent of urban dwellers, or some 20 million people, live in such settlements in Pakistan today. The report says that these settlements, which are found in all Pakistani cities, evolved due to the state’s failure to provide low-income citizens with adequate and affordable housing. Over the years, the state has on occasion evicted residents in the name of “cleanliness” or legality, but has consistently failed to come up with a long-term plan to cater for their housing. The principal problem remained the same: Pakistan lacked affordable housing for the urban poor, the report said. Azhar expressed the same view, saying: “There is no adequate planning to accommodate the poor people in this country who are migrating to the cities from rural areas in search of jobs, not to mention the urban cities’ natural growth rate.” According to the HRCP report, the katchi abadi dwellers, despite often being the poorest of the poor, perform an integral role in the economy, both formally and informally. Many are government and domestic servants, vendors and factory and daily wage workers. Such people are often overlooked, but their contribution to society cannot be denied. For katchi abadi residents, however, the principal problem remains the living conditions within the settlements themselves, many of which do not receive proper municipal services such as water and electricity. Poor sanitation conditions have rendered rife otherwise preventable diseases among young people. In an effort to curb this problem, state authorities had been demolishing many katchi abadi homes, the report said. Such demolitions of homes have been going on for many years, but the situation in recent times has escalated. After coming to power in October 1999, the military government of Chief Executive General Pervez Musharraf instructed many of the country’s civil institutions to downsize and become commercially viable entities. However, instead of attempting to restructure these institutions, administrations had resorted to massive lay-offs and demolitions of squatter settlements to reclaim state land, the report added. The Pakistani railway authorities are said to have demolished some 2,000 homes in cities such as Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar. “We are scared [of] what will happen to us,” Peter John, a 22 year-old unemployed Christian resident of one such settlement in Islamabad, told IRIN. “If we are forced out of here, where are we to go?” According to John, living conditions for the settlement’s 1,000 residents are extremely difficult. There are periodic electricity cuts. Sanitation and water services were almost nonexistent, he said. For the moment, however, the threat of eviction for millions of katchi abadi dwellers appears to have abated. According to an article in the Pakistani daily ‘The News’ on 5 April, General Musharraf has directed the provincial governments to finalise resettlement plans to provide alternatives to those in need. He has asked the provinces to establish committees to identify people using katchi abadis for commercial purposes, while at the same time, to identify alternatives for “deserving” dwellers, who need to be resettled. As part of a comprehensive plan set to be carried out to completion by 30 June, some katchi abadi settlements will have to be shifted, particularly those with dwellings situated near streams, river banks, sensitive installations, and on commercial sites. In such instances, the dwellers will be permanently moved to areas identified by the land-owning departments and provincial governments. Land in these areas would be sold to those allocated it at affordable prices payable by easy instalments, the report added. Meanwhile, dwellers in katchi abadi settlements gaining official government recognition would be afforded legal security of tenure, as well as access to water, sanitation and other services - but not the right to sell, Azhar said. Dwellers in unrecognised katchi abadi settlements, now under threat of demolition, would gain a temporary reprieve. “If the land where these squatters are living is not needed for any other purpose in the city’s plans, then these people will have the right to buy it on easy instalments. For those whose land is needed, the government will offer them an alternative,” she added. However, the issue of the katchi abadi settlements was far from being resolved, and much more government intervention was required, Azhar cautioned. “Our main concern now is that the implementing agencies sometimes find loopholes in not carrying out the government’s orders or directives. This is what we have to watch out for now,” she stressed.