KARACHI, July 25: According to the Urban Resource Centre, which has studied evictions in Karachi since 1992, more than 64 per cent of school-age boys and almost 99 per cent girls forced to move to Taiser Town were taken out of school by their cash-strapped families.

Nearly 200,000 people have been displaced since work began on the Lyari expressway in January 2002.

A number of injuries and deaths have also been reported after people refused to move for the bulldozers, reports IRIN, the United Nations information unit, quoting the URC.

Karachi authorities bulldozed more than 3,490 houses in the first five months of this year to make way for the road, funded by a Kuwait-based company, which aims to relieve traffic congestion.

Critics of the project, including leading town planners such as architect Arif Hassan, believe that the human cost is too high a price to pay.

The URC said most of the 50,000 people affected had not received proper resettlement and compensation. Only a small number had been relocated to the Hawkesbay site -- another set-up for those evicted.

Moreover, media reports have suggested that some houses that did not fall in the expressway's path had also been demolished as part of a land grab.

Hawkesbay has few basic amenities and is 25km outside central Karachi, meaning that residents who move there effectively lose their jobs, access to healthcare and other facilities. Taiser Town is 30km away from the city.

Habiba Gill, a factory worker, said it was increasingly difficult to commute.

“We spend over Rs50 daily on transport. My husband and I used to go into Karachi to work,” she said the added that the cost meant that they could not afford to send their three daughters to school and they could `only rarely’ afford to buy vegetables.

URC Director Mohammad Younis said the centre’s studies had shown that about 30 per cent of skilled workers who shifted lost their jobs permanently, while others became jobless for a shorter period.

The provision of housing is a growing problem across Pakistan, most notably in big cities like Karachi, which has a population of nearly 14 million. More than half its residents live in unregulated settlements where piped water, sewage or other facilities are rarely available, the IRIN report says.

Miloon Kothari, the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, said in May that there should be an “immediate halt to all forced evictions” in Karachi, adding that there was a lack of public participation, inadequate relocation sites and excessive use of force during evictions.

UN guidelines require comprehensive impact assessments in advance of evictions and written notification to all those affected. As the controversy continues, dislocated people struggle to resurrect shattered lives.—PPI