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Once upon a time, Karachi was an example for the world. Karachi was the “city of lights”, “Paris of Asia”, “second Dubai” and many more names that increased the fame of Karachi.
But now the city of Karachi is the city of some serious problems, their people are facing problems of water, sewerage, cleanliness, health, transport, education and law and order system as well. We hear daily regarding above problems but now we have one more problem, we observe daily on the pavements of roads but nobody discusses this problem, the problem is pavement dwelling because we don’t know the consequences of this problem.
Pavement dwellers are not only beggars and drugs addicts but also those people who are the employees in both formal and informal sector. Pavement dwellers in Karachi are increasing day by day but government or administration of this city is not paying any attention towards this problem while in other countries government provides models to resolve these types of problems effectively.
There are four major interconnected reasons for the pavement dwelling. First is rural to urban migration the reason of this migration are weakening of the moral authority of feudal control on the rural areas of Sindh and Punjab which has made physical and social mobility possible and other reason for this migration is the increasing need for cash that the rural economy cannot provide to the poorer sections of the population, according to Arif Hasan, is an architect, urban planner, and social activist.
The second reason is high rents for housing, the 62.5 percent population of Karachi is lying on the poverty line or under. These people can’t afford the high rents so they have only two choices either move towards informal settlements or select suitable pavements and bridges for the dwelling. We can say that pavement dwelling is a first step or foundation in the making of the house in informal settlements.
The third reason is the bad condition of the transport sector. Karachi is the city of about 28 million population but until there is no mass transit system established in Karachi due to this the commutation time is increased and this extra time for commutation destroys the social life of the people. Those people who reside on the periphery of the city and do the job in the center of the city have to waste more time and money for commutation so they take the decision to live in the squatter settlements or pavements are close to the employment’ zones.
The fourth reason is drug addiction. Around 2 million people are drug addicts in Karachi, in pavement dwellers, the large figure belongs to the drug addicts, mostly drug addicts who dwell on the pavement they escape from the home or families disown them due to the habit of addiction.
These pieces of evidence are supported by interviews of pavement dwellers and experts of urban planning by observation and conversations with recent Sindhi-speaking migrants in Karachi.
The government will have to make a proper model with a participatory approach to combat this problem because this problem is creating many more problems such as road accidents, affect the city’s aesthetics, consolidating the network of drugs supply, prostitution, and street crimes.
