The District Co-ordination Officer (DCO), Karachi, Mir Hussain Ali, has said that two problems have hindered the development of a proper water distribution system and a comprehensive sewerage infrastructure in mega city of Karachi.
He made this observation in an elaborate paper on Orangi Pilot Project which he presented at the 5th Thematic seminar on Public Participation in Water Resources Management and Solid Waste Management held in Japan recently.
The seminar was organised by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies to which he was specially invited from Pakistan.
Mir Hussain Ali identified the two main problems as presence of multiple administrative domains like Cantonments, Defence Housing Authority, Karachi Port Trust, Pakistan Railways etc and creation of informal settlements accommodating more than 50 percent of the population of Karachi.
He said that lack of treatment facilities both for domestic as well as industrial effluent, is again a major problem in Karachi.
Presently there are only three domestic sewerage treatment plants having a capacity of 151 MGD whereas the requirement was much more. Besides, there is no industrial effluent plant at all in any of the six major industrial estates of Karachi.
In this scenario where the government authorities due to various reasons have not been able to provide an effective sewerage system to all the localities of the city, the channel of community participation becomes all important, specially in those informal settlements, majority of which are not even eligible for being regularised as per existing laws, the DCO stated in his paper.
He referred to Orangi Town and told the seminar that it was one of the 18 towns of Karachi City District and is famous for being known as the largest informal settlement in Asia.
He said with the exception of a few planned sectors, all the other parts of this Town are in the shape of informal settlements and it was in this favourable atmosphere that Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) came into existence.
The Orangi Pilot Project, he informed, is probably the world's most reputed non-governmental Project aiming towards the provision of sanitation for the poorer population in urban areas.
Continuing, he recalled this project started in the year 1980 in the crowded Orangi settlements having a population of nearly 1.2 million and the founder of the project was Dr Akhtar Hameed Khan, a dedicated developmental worker.
The Orangi Pilot Project, he said, within a few years has developed into a prominent community participated activity which is self-funded, self-administered and self-maintained.
It's total reliance is on the resources and skills of the local urban poor population using local materials and labour in building hundreds of kilometer, of extremely low cost underground sewers.
During this period, around 92,000 families have benefited from this scheme in about 6000 lanes, which becomes nearly 90 percent of the entire settlements and about Rs 82 million contributed by the community for achieving this target, and as a result, a radical change has been brought about in the Orangi settlement.
However, Mir Hussain Ali told the galaxy of participants that a perception has developed that the initiative taken by OPP would not be successful in other areas of Karachi or outside Karachi.
He said the critics were of the opinion that Orangi has a natural slope which facilitates the flow of sewage without secondary sewers and collection points, whereas a similar activity on flat terrains would not give the desired results.
In his concluding paragraphs, the DCO maintained that the OPP model is unique and believes that the people can, and they do help themselves in order to resolve their problems and this is an undeniable fact since time immemorial.
He said another important aspect of this model is that the activists working in the community to motivate and guide the general public are the members of the same community rather than outsiders while another important factor is the relationship established between the OPP and the people, which is not based on any give or take of finances, but instead, it is simply a support organisation of an advisory nature.
This model, he said, ensures that the community identifies its needs rather than recommendations coming from outsiders.
Having attended to the problems of tertiary sewers in most of the lanes, the OPP has now expanded its activities towards macro-issues of the Karachi sewerage system.
It has now been increasingly involved in city level projects, designing treatment plants, external sanitation infrastructure etc.
Mir Hussain Ali told the seminar that OPP experience is certainly an outstanding example of community participation which can be emulated not only in other cities of Pakistan but in other countries too.
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