KARACHI, Aug 28: Speakers at a seminar on Monday said that urban poverty could not be effectively checked unless pro-poor policies were made, income opportunities were increased and quality of life of people was improved.
Speaking at the inauguration of the two-day national conference on urban poverty, organized jointly by the UNDP and the Aga Khan University, they said the country could not meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) without addressing the basic needs of the urban poor.
Adviser on local government Waseem Akhtar inaugurated the conference while Dr Gregory Pappas, Tasneem Siddiqui, Dr Noman Ahmad, Shakeel Ahmad, Dr Nadeem-ul-Haq, Anwar-ul-Haq, Muzaffar M. Qureshi, Karamat Ali, Kausar S. Khan, Akhtar Baloch, Mehtab Karim, and others also spoke to the participants, comprising economists, demographers, government planners, engineers, educators, doctors, representatives of civil society organizations, etc.
The speakers said that the world was entering an urban transition and by 2007 the global urban population would exceed the rural population.
As poverty is growing in cities, the battle to achieve the MDGs would have to be waged in the city slums, they said.
They said many developing countries, including Egypt, Thailand a nd Tunisia, had not only managed to reduce slum growth in the past 15 years by improving the living conditions in the slums, Pakistan can also improve the quality of life of urban poor by increasing employment opportunities, investing in low-cost affordable housing by cleaning the environment and improving drinking water quality and improving quality and access of services for the low income people.
They said while there was a general perception that cities were better off than the countryside, there was a greater income inequality in the urban areas as compared to the rural areas.
They said at present almost 50 per cent of the urban population lived in slums and there had been greater increase in consumption inequalities during the past five years than earlier, which call for more in-depth urban development interventions.
They said the consequences of the urban poverty were crowding, inadequate housing, poor education, social disintegration, poor hygiene, security problems and violence.
They said urban slums were plagued with mosquito borne diseases – like Dengue fever, etc – air pollution caused lung and heart diseases, drug adduction, HIV / AIDS, while contaminated water causes gastroenteritis and as sick workforce is bad for business, it led to lost wages completing the poverty cycle.
One of the speakers said if non developmental expenditures were curtailed, the funding for the social sector, like health, education etc could be enhanced and even social security net could also be provided to citizens.
Another speaker said the land in the city was being used by the vested interest groups and the land usage was being changed to favour a few people so that they could earn more profit rather than to use it for the general betterment of the community. The speakers said the government’s land allotment schemes and private housing projects were being misused by speculators and invisible investors owing to which the prices of land and houses was inflated and getting out of the reach of the poor, for whom the government claimed to be making policies and announcing these schemes.
They said that roads were being made signal free, flyovers were being made so that cars could run smoothly without any hindrance but no mass transit projects – for local trains and public buses, etc -- were made or if made then not implemented so that the poor of the city could reach their workplace easily.
They said there were over 1.2 million streetchildren in the country and over 25,000 of them in the city alone. But no policies are made for this one of the most vulnerable section of the society.
