Not serious? Solution is easy but requires political will: Siddiqui

Urban planner proposes solution to informal settlements, low-income housing needs

ISLAMABAD: A renowned urban planner has suggested that the federal government follow the model of ‘Khuda Ki Basti’ adopted by Sindh to resolve the issue of informal settlements in the capital.

Town planner and former Sindh Katchi Abadis Authority Director-General Tasneem Siddiqui made this recommendation at a seminar titled ‘Beyond Evictions: Resolving the crisis of low-income housing in Islamabad’.

The event was organized by the All-Pakistan Katchi Abadi Alliance (APKAA) at a local hotel on Thursday.

“It’s easy to bulldoze informal settlements, but in the future it will have dire consequences,” Siddique said. He quoted the example of Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro slums, saying the solution was easy but required political will.

In 2001, Siddique offered the Capital Development Authority the same solution he implemented in Sindh; establishing low-cost housing at Islamabad’s zone-IV for the labourers.

He said the government did not entertain his suggestion citing zoning regulations. Zoning regulations for that specific area were later changed in 2010 by the capital authority, allegedly succumbing to the pressure of land-grabbers. Since then, construction activities have been allowed in the area in question. He added that there was a widely accepted notion, spread by the ‘middleclass intelligentsia’, of slum-dwellers being criminals and terrorists.

“Indeed they are hardworking people: ‘Islamabad the beautiful’ was developed by them. The city cannot function without them,” he said.

Siddiqui criticised the government’s state of affairs, saying a number of housing schemes for the elite and middle class were given priority over low-wage citizens.

Awami National Party (ANP) Senator Afrasiab Khattak asked whether farmhouses allotted in the past to influential people to grow vegetables and poultry to meet the city’s needs were serving the purpose for which the lands were allotted.

“Islamabad is the city of the privileged, where laws apply only to the poor,” the senator said, and said the city’s master plan needed to be revisited with specific reference to housing for low income groups.

“You need workers and servants in your cities, but you can’t give them space to live? Even the Mughal rulers were not this bad!” he opined.

Khattak also noted that katchi abadis exist due to forced mass migrations caused by poor state policies.

“Fifteen years ago, the CDA at least acknowledges in their documents that katchi abadis are the result of the lack of low cost-housing. So why in 2015 do we see the scenes of destruction that took place at I-11?” AWP Punjab President Dr Aasim Sajjad Akhtar asked.

He said there is a current housing shortage of 10 million units in the country; the majority of which are for low-cost units, while a surplus exists for middle and upper classes.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 28^th, 2015.