TO A SEWER
A visit to the lanes of the Orangi katchi
abadi
Or to the vast katchi abadi of Orangi, in
Karachi, Pakistan - a slum that is bigger than most cities, where the
most effective, most practical, most unifying link between a million
poor families is nothing abstract like solidarity or human tenderness -
but sewage!
Exposure visits to the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) follow a
little more structured model than the Indian or African visits.
Probably because the whole project, as it progresses, has been used for
a long time as a living training ground for extending the model of
community managed sanitation to other settlements, other cities and
other parts of Asia.
Hundreds and thousands of people have come here for specific training in
building sewers, organising lanes, digging manholes. And so the training
has been systematized.
The OPP staff, which combines technical people and social organizers,
from both the communities and from the professions, have got it down to
a science.
Visitors are first sat down and given a formal presentation about OPP’s
work, in the training centre, richly illustrated with before and
after slides.
The OPP’s concept is very simple: off-site infrastructure is done by
the government, and on-site infrastructure is developed, built and paid
for by the communities - with assistance from OPP.
Engineers who come say "Impossible! Communities have no
skills!" NGOs say "They cannot do it!" and
community people say "We’re too poor! How can we afford to
invest in this? This is cruelty!"
After the presentation, they are sent out into the lanes of Orangi
with someone to meet the people who have done this work.
"This lane has laid its own sewage system, it has built its
own water supply. If you would like to talk to anybody you can."
So people come out, they bring out their chairs or their beds and
spread them out in the lane, and everyone sits down and discusses. It is
here that visitors learn how pipes link all these million families -
small pipes in hundreds of small lanes connecting to secondary drains,
then to main drains, and at the edge of Orangi to the municipal trunk
sewers.
And all along the way, the vital issues are level, slope, pipe
diameter, sewerage flow. They learn how all these pipes are the basis of
organising their settlements, improving their lives and health,
consolidating their right to stay.
Skepticism melts away. And what all these proud sewer-builders tell
them is,
"You know, we’ve done this - the OPP has only been a pain in
all this."
UPDATE: AUGUST 2001
The Orangi Pilot Project -Research &
Training Institute has been awarded the UN World Habitat Award 2000 on the
theme "Cities without Slums"
