As
the sun sets over an impoverished household in Soling, located off Raiwind Road
on the outskirts of Lahore, Rukhsana Bibi, 36, a housewife and mother of four,
begins preparing the evening meal. She covers her face as smoke billows from
burning firewood, which she uses as fuel for cooking. Her husband, 41-year-old Kareem
Bakhsh, has just returned home from an industrial estate a few kilometres from
their home where he works. Near the mud stove, their youngest son plays in the
dirt, alarmingly close to a leaking drainpipe installed to expel household
waste from the house into the street outside.
Rukhsana’s
family is one of thousands of others in Pakistan who live in similar unplanned
and un-regularised semi-urban settlements – known in academia as peri-urban
areas – on the peripheries of large metropolitan cities like Lahore.
Peri-urban
areas are defined in simple terms as areas directly adjoining urban areas,
between the suburbs and the countryside. They exhibit traits of both urban and
rural areas, but are actually undergoing a transition between the two. In the
case of Lahore – a city district having a population exceeding 12 million –
around 28% of its population, or 3.36 million people, are estimated to live in
peri-urban areas.
A
study carried out by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI)
captures a comprehensive picture of the state of affairs concerning three
essential issues: governance, health and environment. According to the study,
the dilemma of peri-urban areas is that they do not have certain or legal land
tenures; moreover, they do not fall into a purely rural or purely urban
classification.
Most
of these areas have not been formally zoned for housing by the government, nor
urbanised with infrastructure. These settlements often eventuate as illegal
land invasions, which are, therefore, disconnected from municipal service
networks.
The
lack of planned land use policies, basic services delivery, waste management
and adequate water and sanitation services gives rise to a number of
environmental and health risks. Diseases like diarrhoea, gastroenteritis,
malaria and jaundice are stated as the most commonly occurring diseases
year-round, especially during summers, and cases of influenza and throat and
chest infections were mostly reported during winters. In addition, a large
number of skin and other allergies are also very commonly reported in
peri-urban areas. Health experts state that a significant number of diseases
were caused by the use of unsafe, polluted or contaminated water sources in
cooking, drinking or bathing etc.
Over
40% of peri-urban households are not connected to tap water supply, and use
pumps to draw water from shallow groundwater sources which also seem to be
heavily contaminated with pathogens and pollutants. An alarming concern is that
wastewater and sewage from industrial and residential areas flows into such
water bodies near informal settlements. Similarly, the inadequate and poor
sewerage system, common in such areas, gives rise to cholera, typhoid and other
health implications.
Due
to the unavailability of kitchens in homes, residents of such areas cook food
in the open, rendering food items and utensils vulnerable to environmental
contamination and contact with disease causing pathogens. Most households on
the fringes of Lahore use biomass (eg wood) as fuel due to low or no access to
cleaner energy services like natural gas. This cooking practice leads to acute
respiratory infections, particularly in women and children. Additionally, some
residents keep livestock indoors, which increases risk of spoilage and
contamination of stored food, and increases health risks to residents.
Environmental
issues related to unplanned urbanisation include soil erosion, destruction of
vegetation, siltation and depletion of water bodies and pollution of resources
such as soil, air and water.
The
SDPI study proposes a number of recommendations to address the issues of
peri-urban areas, including adequate land policies and official control
procedures; decentralised approaches to basic service provision; greater
collaboration between rural and urban authorities; wider integrated water
management interventions and decentralized wastewater management techniques;
need for project planners to encourage involvement of all relevant entities in
development consultations; and intensive educational initiatives for
occupational activities as well as awareness related to basic health and
hygiene, waste management, and water and sanitation issues.
As
night falls over peri-urban neighbourhoods and mothers lull their children to
sleep, one can only hope that adequate attention to policy by decision-makers
leads to the dawn of better days for the millions who dwell in such deprived
areas in Pakistan.
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