Wednesday, 22 January 2014 00:02
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IT is not without a sense of irony that people will read the allocation of Rs.6 billion to build new apartments for Members of Parliament and Rs. 500 million more approved for renovations of the Parliament by the Cabinet. It is ironic because thousands of people in and outside of Colombo live without homes and could have used at least a portion of these funds to make their lives better.
Members of Parliament, everyone knows, are not poor. They already have a house, sometimes several, earned from “serving” the public and therefore one could argue that fancy apartment complexes complete with restaurants, gyms and swimming pool can be easily afforded on their private earnings. Perhaps the best way to serve the public is to allow funds to be used for the benefit of the people. No one can argue the need.
An increase in the number of people moving to urban areas, population growth and a lack of government planning and investment, has led to an increase of informal settlements and overcrowding in existing settlements in Sri Lanka. With no secure tenure of land, many poor people have no affordable alternative but to illegally occupy Government land, leaving them vulnerable to eviction.
Sri Lanka’s urban informal settlements are characterised by poor quality housing and inadequate water, sanitation, drainage and solid-waste infrastructure, resulting in pollution, ill health, and poor social wellbeing. In Colombo, Homeless International, a non-governmental organisation, estimates around half of the city’s residents live in informal settlements: 33% have limited access to clean water and 39% have limited access to a decent toilet.
To the Urban Development Authority Colombo, home to over 30% of the country’s 20 million population, has one in every two people categorised as a slum dweller. The detriment of this has been evident for many months. As the government moves to develop key commercially valuable areas more and more urban poor are losing their houses.
In capital Colombo, there is already evidence of this. With multiple efforts, the Urban Development Authority (UDA) under the Defence Ministry is busy fast-tracking measures for a clean city but this does not always cover equitable development. Scores of poor families have been moved out, at times forcibly, from places they have occupied for many decades to make way for glittering hotels and apartment blocks. From the families at Slave Island to the laundry community down Nawam Mawatha, there are questions over the procedures followed and whether they benefit the poorest of the poor.
The Government has pledged to build apartment housing for 60,000 odd families. Yet they are usually disempowered from participating in the decision-making process, which is anyway highly opaque and politicised. Innumerable instances of political cronies being given shops and homes meant for poor beneficiaries have been reported, with little being done about it. Moreover, with almost no accountability mechanism where deprived families can complain and obtain redress, hope for equitable development is at best diluted.
Outside of Colombo is no better. Most people face steep challenges in finding low cost financing options for their houses and while handouts cannot be sanctioned for everyone it is the responsibility of the Government to use public funds in a responsible manner that benefits the people.
