South Asian Cities: Slums, not villages real polio battleground, say experts

WASAs need to be independent, eliminate virus reservoirs.

KARACHI:

“The government plans to allocate funds based on performance of WASAs which would will encourage competition and improve the quality of work,” said former finance minister Dr Salman Shah said at a session of Pakistan Urban Forum-South Asian Cities Conference.

Pakistan could be soon facing international sanction for being unable to eradicate polio which is hardly surprising as Karachi’s Gadap Town and Peshawar have become known as ‘reservoirs’ for the poliovirus.

Kamran Naeem from UN-Habitat stressed that curtailing the transmission of the disease was as important as launching anti-polio drives.

Two polio cases have been already confirmed from Karachi’s Baldia Town this year. The virus, Naeem said, mostly spreads orally after infected sewage water mixes with drinking water, which multiplies over time.

“We started off trying to fix problems in the rural areas but we soon figured out that sanitary issues were at a much higher ratio in the urban areas, where sewage is disposed of untreated,” he said, adding that the infrastructure of the financial hub was rusting, compounding the problem.



Naeem stressed that in order to overcome the poliovirus it was necessary for the government to take control of the water and sewage management of the slum areas of the country.

Citing Gadap Town as a case study, he shared a survey conducted by UNICEF which stated that around 95% of the local residents in Gadap Town unofficially used the services of the Karachi Water and Sewage Board.

“Our efficiency will not be optimum if we fail to take into account the slum areas of the city. If we want to get rid of the menace we will have to bring the slum areas under the water board,” he said.

Talking about the steps which can be taken to improve the efficiency of the municipality system, Shah said that new polices, which make Water and Sanitation Agencies (WASAs) independent, should be drafted. Elaborating on plans to be implemented in Punjab, Shah said that competition should be brought in to improve WASAs.

Supporting Shah’s suggestions, Vandana Bhatnagar said that the private sector could play a vital role in improving the efficiency of the municipality as it would bring investment and initiate self-financing which would stabilise the entities and make them independent.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 12^th, 2014.