KARACHI, Aug 6: Speakers at a workshop on Tuesday stressed that research and development being done in the field of low-cost construction material in different areas be shared among regional countries for the benefit of the poor.

They were speaking on the second day of the three-day workshop on “Role of research and development institutions for Introduction of appropriate technologies for low-cost housing / shelter in SAARC region, being organized by the Council for Works and Housing Research and sponsored by SAARC-Japan special fund.

Ten delegates — two each — from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Maldives, and two from Pakistan are attending the workshop. Two country papers — that of Sri Lanka and Pakistan — were presented on Tuesday.

The Sri Lankan delegate G. K. K. A. De Silva, presenting the country paper, said that housing was one of the critical issues of Sri Lanka as well as other SAARC countries as the population was rapidly increasing and owing to the limited financial resources, housing was getting limited.

He said like other countries in the region, there were gaps between the supply and demand and to counter that the government’s National Engineering Research and Development Centre in Sri Lanka had developed and introduced many technologies during the past three decades.

He said annual housing demand for the island country was approximately 150,000 housing units but only around 65,000 units were being constructed. The shortage was owing to various factors including high cost of construction material, shortage of skilled workers, unavailability of suitable land, etc.

He said that NERDC has introduced various components like pre-stressed columns, concrete door and window frames, composite slabs, etc. He said that special attention needs to be given to the low income and middle class people because the housing problem would greatly affect these two people.

He said that development of appropriate technology would reduce construction cost as it would replace the costly conventional items — like doors, windows, roof, slabs, etc — and reduce the labour expenses.

Dr Attaullah Maher, presenting the country paper for Pakistan, said that there were around 19.54 million houses for the country’s over 131 million people brining the occupancy rate at 6.55 persons per house which, according to the international standards, is very high and considered to be overcrowding.

He said shortage of houses in the country was around 6.25 million and the presently over 580,000 housing units were required annually. He said that surveys had showed that low income communities usually lived in short-life or kutcha structures (75 per cent in rural and 45 per cent in urban areas), while 19 per cent of the houses were of semi pucca construction and around 36 per cent in urban and 6 per cent in rural areas houses were of pucca construction.

He said that new materials developed through R & D, both nationally and internationally, were grouped item-wise, according to their potential for application to different regions of the country. He said that this grouping was done on technical basis subject to evaluation of socioeconomic viability, thereof.

He said it was recommended that feasibility of these materials be assessed by using them in pilot projects having size of 500 to 1,000 housing units, so that their commercial application may be examined.

Hafeezur Rehman of the Association of Builders and Developers said that out of 13 million rural households nearly 41 per cent lived in one-room houses in which predominant roofing material was mud, wood, bamboos with straws and thatch.

He said that SAARC countries were full of natural resources and what was needed was to tap these resources and find ways ad means to use these for the benefit of the poor masses by providing them low-cost housing.

He urged the SAARC governments to increase their research and development budgets and also urged the private organisations to support these institutions involved in research as was being done in the developed western countries.

He said ABAD had constructed low cost houses in Steel Town and Surjani Towns at a cost ranging between $ 1,000 and $ 2,000 each.

The CWHR chief N. H. Taqvi said that Pakistan faced a annual shortage of around 270,000 houses annually as the requirement was around 0.57 million as against the supply of roughly 0.3 million units. He said that to make up for the backlog of roughly 4.3 million units, the annual housing production needs to be raised to around 0.5 million.

Later groups were formed to discuss the issues and formulate the recommendations that would be issued on Wednesday.

Earlier, on the Monday Tasneem Ahmad Siddiqui shared his experiences regarding his scheme Khuda Ki Basti, Arif Hassan spoke about the community development work done by the Orangi Pilot project. NED University Vice Chancellor Abul Kalam also spoke.

Foreign delegates Shahid Alam presented country paper of Bangladesh; Karma Yezer and Bachu Phub Dorji presented the country paper for Bhutan, Abdullah Thalaal Ahmad presented the paper for Maldives, and Kibindra Bahadur Bishta presented the paper for Nepal. Other foreign delegates attending the workshop are: Mohammad Khaliquzzaman (Bangladesh), Abdul Hannan Yoosuf (Maldives), Laxman Raj Shrestha (Nepal), H. M. R. Menike (Sri Lanka), while Dr Sarosh Hashmat Lodhi is representing Pakistan.