Making a difference in Pakistan

Pakistan's urban slums are ridden with human waste and rubbish.

Credit: WaterAid / Caroline Penn

This month sees the long-awaited opening of WaterAid's latest country office and the appointment of Arif Pervaiz, our first Country Programme Manager for Pakistan. 

Although WaterAid began funding rural work through our partners in Pakistan in 1993 it is only now that the presence of an office is finally being realised.

For the first three years of operating in Pakistan WaterAid funded water and sanitation projects in the remote rural areas of the country until, in 1996, the focus of the programme changed.

WaterAid and its partners in Pakistan have since concentrated entirely on improving the lives of people living in the sprawling, unplanned slum areas surrounding Pakistan's major urban centres.

It is in these areas that open sewers filled with human waste and discarded rubbish wind their way through the crowded narrow lanes and passageways. It is here that children play alongside pools of stagnant, putrid water. Malaria and all manner of water-borne diseases are indiscriminate and silent killers.

The urgent need for life-saving sanitation in the slums of Pakistan has spawned an innovative and highly successful large-scale, community-led urban engineering project. Much of this is thanks to the mobilisation and action encouraged by the pioneering work of the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) and its visionary founder, sociologist Dr Akhter Hameed Khan.

The OPP is an institution unlike any other. It does not fund development projects nor does it provide tools or equipment. Yet since it began it has enabled well over one million people living in Pakistan's slums to safely dispose of their sewage, resulting in huge social and health benefits.

Through the Orangi Pilot Project and others like it communities at street level are empowered to finance, construct and manage their own underground sewerage systems which feed into mains sewers provided by the municipal authorities.

The role of OPP is to facilitate dialogue between the city authorities and the communities themselves as well as to provide training and technical guidance to the authorities and the community members.

With the communities themselves providing the financing, labour and management of the street level sewers the costs have been kept astonishingly low.

The Orangi Pilor Project has been highly successful in mobilising communities.

Credit: WaterAid / Caroline Penn

WaterAid currently provides funds and expertise to nine partner organisations in Pakistan undertaking urban sanitation projects based on the OPP model. Across the country from Lahore to Khairpur tens of thousands of people are becoming empowered to help themselves out of the poverty trap and are improving their lives.

As a result of the success of the Orangi Pilot Project the Government of Pakistan is altering its policy on water and sanitation and is putting much greater emphasis on decentralising its administration and encouraging community participation and education.

But it is not just the Pakistani government that is taking note. The methodology pioneered by OPP is influencing similar programmes across the developing world and is improving life for slum dwellers as far afield as South Africa and Nepal.

With the opening of WaterAid's country office in Pakistan we plan to continue working with our urban partners but also to expand into rural areas and play a leading role in influencing policy decisions.