“We have been living here for over a century now,” said 65-year-old Mohan Lal, who lives in the Hindu Para inside Chanesar Goth. Even though the neighbourhood is located adjacent to DHA Phase I, the residents live without basic necessities, such as gas and sewerage.
“Nothing will happen. No change can take place. We are tired of giving details of our plight. Please leave us alone,” said Mohan Lal, dejectedly. “Can you imagine neither do we have water and sanitation facilities nor any Sui gas to cook food?”
An overpowering stench greeted me as I tried to enter the neighbourhood and wriggled my way through the narrow lanes. Children, with their clothes missing, crawled around the streets and women were doing their laundry at the main doors of their houses. Most of the houses had only one room but were inhabited by an average of eight to 10 family members.
“There are around 400 households in this slum area with a population of at least 4,000 but hardly any child goes to school,” said Maharaj Mathan Das. He believed that most of them remained illiterate because of poverty and discrimination against their community. “It is hard for us to bear our kitchen expenses, we cannot afford to send our children to school,” he added.
Dhola, a 70-year-old vendor in Bohri Bazaar, Saddar, recalled former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s visit to this area in 1975. “There was heavy rain and Bhutto was in the area so we intercepted his caravan on this road and took him inside the para,” he said.
During the visit, Bhutto promised to develop the neighbourhood but the residents are still waiting for some change, he added.
“It seems like we are living in the Stone Age,” said Nand Lal, a community activist. “Our families are still using wood as fuel for cooking instead of gas lines that pass by our doorsteps yet we are deprived of it,” he explained, bitterly.
Nand Lal has visited the ministry of minority affair’s office several times but they have never been offered any tangible solution to their problems. “Our community had offered to develop the slum area with financial support from the government but all in vain.”
“Billion of rupees are spent on roads, flyovers, bridges and parks in the city but not a single drainage line is given to us,” he added. He was also upset that NGOs have a significant presence in other parts of the city but no one has come to Chanesar Goth to open a school or even a vocational centre.
Seerath Bai’s house is built on a footpath next to the main road but she insisted that she had not encroached upon the land. In fact, the road was built on her house, she said.
Pointing to the large bungalows on the other side of the road, Seerath Bai recalled the days when there were hills in the area and a thick jungle. “Our children would get scared of animals that lived inside the jungle,” she said.
“Our men have worked hard to develop Defence but we are still living on the same footpath with no electricity,” she added.
The former union council nazim of the area and Pakistan People Party Karachi Division general-secretary, Saeed Ghani, said that they provided water and sewerage to the neighbourhood. “It was not possible to give a connection to each family so we made a centralised system and asked them to get a connection on their own,” he said. A very few people have, however, benefitted from this facility, he added.
Ghani explained that since it is a congested area, none of the labourers are ready to work inside. Pipelines are often damaged due to frequent clashes as well, he said. “My father was an elected representative of the area and he had prepared a plan in 1995 to convert this area into apartments but after his assassination the project has been pending,” he said. He hoped that the project can be started again by the present government. Several attempts were made to contact the minority affairs minister but he was not immediately available.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 25th, 2010.
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