KARACHI, Aug 25: A two-day national conference on ‘Urban Poverty’, being organised jointly by the UNDP and the Aga Khan University, begins at the AKU auditorium on Monday.

Announcing this at a press briefing at the university on Friday, Dr Gregory Pappas, Dr Yousuf Memon, Kausar S. Khan and Talat Tayabji said that about 100 representatives of governmental and non-governmental organisations, including intellectuals, academicians, scholars, researchers and community representatives, from all over the country would participate in the conference.

They said that one of the key objectives of the conference was to initiate a process of enhancing understanding among different stakeholders to prepare strategies for ensuring sustainable development in urban areas, particularly those dominated by the poor class, in the country.

They noted that there the rural areas were already hit by severe poverty but with the passage of time urban areas also were faced with such a situation. Uncontrolled urbanisation has a major impact on social services and is causing cropping up of problems relating to poverty, empowerment, governance, development, etc.

They pointed out that socio-economic problems, such as an increase in the rate of urban poverty, loss of social control and values, rise in juvenile delinquency, youth violence, corruption and crime, adjustment of the rural migrants in urban setting, lack of civic amenities and educational, recreational and health facilities, lack of services for the handicapped, etc., were related to the rapid urbanisation and needed to be addressed immediately.

They said that the delegates at the conference would discuss and identify issues and priorities vis-a-vis urban poverty, besides suggesting ways and means to resolve the same.

Among the participants of the moot would be Nadeemul Haq, Tasneem Siddiqui, Abu Shamim Arif, Perveen Rehman, Jamil Yusuf, A. B. Lakhani, Ghaffar Billo, Ghulam Mohiuddin, Karamat Ali, Anis Jillani, Badar Sabir Ali, Faisal Edhi, Qutubuddin Aziz and Muzaffar Qureshi.