Rural Sindh: Villages make first contacts with modern technology

Coastal development project aims to uplift small communities in rural areas.

ISLAMABAD:

As yet, there are no transmission lines or power grids near Ameer’s village. But two years ago, his small coastal community, comprising 23 households, had already received electricity for the first time. It arrived in the form of small, square solar panels.

Access to indoor lighting has helped protect villagers from snakebites and scorpion stings in the dark; men can now also work on their fishing nets after dusk, while women sew and create handicrafts at night.

Electricity has also opened these villages to modern communications. “We had no means of communicating any fishing accidents or calamities when we are at sea before,” Ameer says. “But now we use mobile phones, which we can recharge at our own homes.”

Ameer, who identified himself with only a first name, is a fisherman in his mid-thirties from the Hayat Jat village of district Thatta. His village is just one out of 851 villages in the five talukas of district Thatta and two talukas of district Badin which have benefited from community-driven and government-backed interventions under the Sindh Coastal Community Development Project (SCCDP).



The six-year, $40 million project was initiated in 2007-08. It is funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and is being executed by the Sindh Coastal Development Authority (SCDA).

Through community mobilisation and institutional plans, the multi-sector project aims to reduce poverty in Sindh’s coastal communities and develop infrastructure along the province’s coastline.

With alternative energy and wireless communications, Hayat Jat might sound like a quaint, tech-savvy place. The thatched huts, lack of schools and absence of potable water, however, confine it to its largely primitive status. Nonetheless, there is something new and potent about this fisher folk’s village: a sense of community.

The same bond is palpable in all villages which fall under the project area. Through its implementing partner, the National Rural Support Programme (NRSP), the SCCDP has helped set up 1,525 community organisations in the 851 villages.

The NRSP staff also trained over 38,000 people from the villages. “The trainings were designed to help the participants think collectively, save money for community projects, apply for their identity cards, get their villages registered and demand their rights at the union council level,” says Ghulam Mustafa Haider, project director of the NRSP.

Ever since, community organisations have gone on to complete over 1,000 projects related to energy, civil works, education, water and livestock in their respective villages. Hayat Jat has a solar lighting and toilets project; other villages have built hand-operated water-pumps and small school buildings as well.

The community-driven initiatives were funded by the SCCDP, but villagers also chipped in to cover the operations and maintenance costs.

Coastal management and development

The coastal management component of the SCCDP focuses on mangrove plantations and the seafood generating potential of Sindh’s coastal shelf.

Khawar Parvez Awan, director of the Sindh Fisheries Department, says ten fish ponds have been constructed in Thatta as part of the SCCDP, while work is in progress on a fish hatchery in Badin. The department has also successfully tested oyster farming using special rafts for the first time in Pakistan.

Awan says Pakistan’s seafood exports bring in $300 million annually, but the proper farming of crabs and oysters – which are considered delicacies abroad – could help Pakistan rake in nearly a billion dollars per year from seafood exports.

“We are also teaching fishermen to improve their fishing techniques and explore oyster farming, so that they can diversify and enhance their livelihoods,” Awan said.

The SCDA is also formulating five-year and 20-year coastal development plans. The plans include projects for poverty alleviation, natural resources rehabilitation and infrastructure development, worth Rs6.4 billion, Rs3 billion and Rs479 billion respectively.

The SCCDP was supposed to be completed by December 2012, but work on district government interventions (roads, elevated platforms) has been stalled due to administrative changes and floods, Muhammad Umer Memon, the project’s director, said.

Memon said the SCDA has requested the ADB for a one-year loan extension. So far, the project has only utilised 60% – or Rs1.95 billion – of the total loan of Rs3.13 billion, he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 26^th, 2012.