May 11, 2007	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 23, 1428

RAWALPINDI, May 10: Though Pakistan has performed somewhat better with a population growth rate of 2.7 per cent, a UN report on human settlements has pointed out that the population of Islamabad is growing at the rate of 6 per cent per annum.

The urban population in the federal capital with a total area of 906 square-km has been estimated at 65.7 per cent.

The growing population has forced the Capital Development Authority (CDA) to redesign its master plan and set new priorities based on the emerging needs.

Due to increased population, the infrastructure including roads and highways have also become under pressure forcing the CDA to construct flyovers at important intersections and a network of efficient roads to meet the growing demand.

Punjab has an urban population growth rate of over four per cent per annum. It has also the highest poverty levels in the country. About 35 per cent of Punjab’s urban population of 25 million lives in slums and over 70 per cent of these live below the poverty line.

Levels of urban services are low and the coverage and quality varies greatly between towns. Many centres lack access to drinkable water, while sewerage systems are mostly old and poorly maintained, and solid waste collection services patchy.

Karachi has been named among the five top cities, where mass evictions of slum dwellers have been carried out. The trend suggests that security of tenure is becoming increasingly precarious in cities where evictions are often carried out to make room for large-scale infrastructure or city beautification programmes.

The world had 913 million slum dwellers in 2001. Improving the lives of 100 million would then touch just a little over one out of ten slum dwellers. Translating this proportion approach into the Asian-Pacific context would mean that in 2001 the number of slum dwellers in the region was 534 million; the lives of at least 53 million people already living in slums would have to be improved. However, in the same period, the number of slum dwellers in Asia-Pacific has increased by 58 million (to 592 million in 2005), says the report.

If no slum improvements were carried out in the period 2001- 2020, approximately 226 million new slum dwellers are expected to add to the existing slum population during this period. Therefore, a higher (and more credible) figure should be targeted for upgrading while developing alternative solutions to prevent the additional urban poor from living in slum conditions.

The rate at which slums are growing exceeds the rate at which they are being improved. This severely impacts the achievement of Millennium Development Goals by 2020 to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers. Some 200 million more slum dwellers have been added to the world’s urban population since 2000. If current trends continue by 2020, there will be 400 million more people drawn into the misery of slum life and the global slum population will reach 1.4 billion, the report says.