There are an estimated 10 million street vendors in India. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS

By Neeta Lal
NEW DELHI, Jun 2 2015 (IPS)

For the past nine years, 27-year-old Jignesh has been hawking bed sheets on the bustling pavements of Janpath, a major throughway in India’s capital, New Delhi, as kamikaze traffic swirls around him.

Illiterate and jobless, the young street vendor migrated from the western Indian state of Gujarat to eke out a living for his family of four, hoping that this metropolis would offer better prospects.

"It's a daily fight for survival. Sometimes I feel like just giving it all up and getting back to farming." -- Jignesh, a young street vendor who migrated from Gujarat to New Delhi to provide for his family
But local cops and members of the city’s mafia routinely harass the poor vendor to extort ‘hafta’ – a weekly bribe of one dollar that represents a significant chunk of his daily income of five dollars, which he earns after a 12-hour grind.

If he doesn’t comply, he is roughed up, or his wares confiscated.

“It’s a daily fight for survival,” Jignesh tells IPS, rolling up his sleeves to show bruises on his wizened arms, the result of a recent tussle with the police.

“Sometimes I feel like just giving it all up and getting back to farming.”

Despite passage of the path-breaking Street Vendors (Livelihood Protection and Regulation of Street Vending) Bill last year, which ordered local municipal authorities to set up designated vending zones for hawkers to enable them to practise their trade peacefully, few municipalities have honoured the law.

As a result the vast population of vendors in India – over 10 million people – continues to live in insecurity as they attempt to earn an honest day’s living. Many are economic migrants from the country’s rural heartland, where declining agriculture has left millions of smallholders or farm labourers in abject poverty.

Before the Act came into existence, vendors used to hawk their goods illegally, making them vulnerable to extortion, harassment, heavy fines and sudden evictions.

But in 2010, the Supreme Court declared hawking a fundamental right.

“Considering that an alarming percentage of the population in our country lives below the poverty line, and when citizens by gathering meagre resources try to employ themselves as hawkers and street traders, they cannot be subjected to a deprivation on the pretext that they have no rights,” the apex court ruled.

The recent bill provides for the establishment of a Town Vending Committee with representation from all stakeholders – street vendor organisations, civil society groups, traffic police and municipal authorities.

The committee is required to register vendors, providing them with identity cards to better regulate hawking activities in public areas.

Social security and insurance schemes are part of the ambit of the new law, which also promises bank loans to hawkers to keep them out of the clutches of unscrupulous moneylenders.

However, vendors rue that ground realities – like vested interests of political parties and local policemen as well threats from resident welfare societies – continue to make their lives miserable.

“Despite the law, vendors are still regarded as a public nuisance. They are accused of depriving pedestrians of their space and causing traffic jams while local residents blame them of having links with criminals,” says Anurag Shankar, project manager at the National Association of the Street Vendors of India (NASVI), a coalition of 762 vendor organisations that has been campaigning for vendors’ rights since 2004.

“The municipal authorities and housing societies frequently target vulnerable vendors to get them evicted,” Shankar tells IPS.

This results in hundreds of obstacles, including trouble securing a licence, uncertainty over earnings and insecurity over street space.

Hawkers and street vendors in India say they face routine harassment at the hands of the police, local thugs, politicians or municipal authorities. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS

According to Sharit Bhowmik, professor and chairperson of the Centre for Labour Studies at Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, the nub of the matter is that the new Act leaves too much to the discretion of local municipalities, thereby defeating the purpose of a Central legislation.

“The federal structure of the Indian government requires individual states to formulate their own policies and local urban bodies to come up with their own legislation, rules, and guidelines in the context of their local conditions,” he tells IPS.

Adding to the problem, explains the expert, who has written several international papers on street vending, is the fact that master plans for Indian cities rarely factor in space for vendors or pedestrians.

“Planners follow the western template of marketing, making provision for rich traders and big business, ignoring Indian traditions of street hawking. This adds to the space crunch and accounts for much of the current crisis,” he elaborates.

A study conducted by Bhowmik covering 15 Indian cities found that around 65 percent of street vendors took loans from moneylenders at exorbitant rates of interests ranging from 120 to 400 percent.

These loan sharks keep many vendors permanently in debt, retaining just 20-30 percent of their own income while doling out the rest in interest payments or on rent.

“The spiral of indebtedness erodes whatever little remuneration vendors earned,” says Bhowmik.

In April this year, vendors across India held massive rallies in the cities of Surat, New Delhi and Mangaluru to protest the non-implementation of the Street Vendors’ Act.

Agitated street vendors, who were evicted unceremoniously, demanded immediate government attention to the problem.

According to vendors’ representatives, city corporations neglect their interests while kowtowing to figures of authority.

“The vendors are invariably evicted without provision for a proper place for them to work,” Honorary President of the Centre for Indian Trade Unions Sunil Kumar Bajal tells IPS.

“In the process of eviction, they are physically assaulted and their wares destroyed. Often corrupt officials do not return the goods collected during eviction. We want the government to honour its commitment to vendors as directed by the apex court.”

Injustice to street vendors is compounded further by health hazards.

As this demographic spends its entire working day on open roads, its members are vulnerable to a range of health complications from chronic migraines to hyper-acidity, hypertension and high blood pressure due to pollution.

“Lack of access to toilets has an adverse effect on women’s health and many suffer from urinary tract infections and kidney ailments. Mobile female street vendors also face security issues,” explains Bhowmik.

Shankar says the new legislation entitles vendors to be included in the National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM), so that they can also receive skill-based training.

“The Act gives them the right to livelihood, but they are still deprived of facilities like health, housing and education, which people in other unorganised sectors are entitled to. Inclusion in the mission will cover this glaring lacuna.”

Recognition of street vendors ought to be an integral part of urban economies around the world according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), as they offer easy access to a wide range of goods and services.

“Their market base consists of a mass of consumers who welcome [access] to inexpensive goods and services that they provide,” says the ILO.

Currently India has the largest population of street vendors in the world and will likely see a rise in their numbers as rural-urban migration picks up speed in the coming decades.

The United Nation’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) estimates that the global urban population will grow from its current 3.9 billion people to 6.4 billion in 2050. Just three countries – India, China and Nigeria – will account for 90 percent of that growth.

Given that poverty and a lack of urban planning often results in ever-higher numbers of slum dwellers in this country of 1.25 billion people – with 51 percent of people in New Delhi already residing in informal settlements – both local and international development experts say India must prioritize improving the lot of its hawkers and vendors.

If the government fails to take necessary action, millions of people like Jignesh will have to muddle through these busy streets in misery.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Children on their way to school in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi. Credit: Save the Children

By Valentina Ieri
UNITED NATIONS, May 5 2015 (IPS)

It’s called the urban survival gap – fuelled by the growing inequality between rich and poor in both developing and developed countries – and it literally determines whether millions of infants will live or die before their fifth birthday.

Save the Children’s annual report on the State of the World’s Mothers 2015 ranks 179 countries and concludes that that “for babies born in the big city, it’s the survival of the richest.”

Speaking from the launch at U.N. Headquarters, Carolyn Miles, president and CEO of Save the Children, said that for the first time in history, more families are moving into cities to give their children a better life. But this shift from a rural to an urban society has increased disparities within cities.

“Our report reveals a devastating child survival divide between the haves and have-nots, telling a tale of two cities among urban communities around the world, including the United States,” Miles added.

The document estimates that 54 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and by 2050 the concentration of people in cities will increase to 66 percent, especially in Asia and Africa.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that nearly a billion people live in urban slums, shantytowns, on sidewalks, under bridges and along railroad tracks.

Rizelle, 17, and her three-week-old baby. Rizelle lives in a squatted home under a bridge in San Dionisio, Indonesia. Photo credit: Save the Children

While women living in cities may have easier access to primary health care, including hospitals, many governments have been unable to keep up with this rapid urban growth. One-third of all urban residents – over 860 million people – live in slums where they face lack of clean water and sanitation, alongside rampant malnutrition.

Miles said that despite the progress made on reducing urban under-five mortality around the world, the survival divide between rich and poor children in cities is growing even faster than that of poor children in rural areas.

In most of the developing nations surveyed, children living at the bottom 20 percent of the socioeconomic ladder are twice as likely to die as children in the richest 20 percent, and in some cities, the disparity is much higher.

Robert Clay, vice president of the health and nutrition at Save the Children, explained that urban poor are more transient, as they tend to have unsteady jobs and living situations. In rural areas, many people at least have land and food, and a stronger support system within the community.

“In urban areas this doesn’t exist. Urban cities are overcrowded by many ethnic groups living side by side so it’s a bit harder to bond, communicate and build trust. It’s the hidden population that is more problematic to reach,” Clay told IPS.

He said lack of data makes it harder for charities like Save the Children, or national and municipal governments, to access these marginalised communities.

The 10 developing countries with the largest child survival divide are Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ghana, Kenya, India, Madagascar, Nigeria, Peru, Rwanda and Vietnam.

Among the 10 worst wealthy capital cities for child survival, out of the 25 studied, Washington D.C. (U.S.) was number one, followed by Vienna (Austria), Bern (Switzerland), Warsaw (Poland), and Athens (Greece).

The river that runs through the Kroo Bay slum community in Sierra Leone. Credit: Save the Children

By looking at the mother’s index rankings of 2015, based on five criteria – maternal health, children’s well-being, educational status, economic status and women political status, Save the Children says that conditions for mothers and their children in the 10 bottom-ranked countries – all but two of them in West and Central Africa – are dramatic, as nations struggle to provide the basic infrastructure for the health and wellness of their citizens.

“On average, in these countries one woman out of 30 dies from pregnancy-related causes, and one child out of eight dies before his or her fifth birthday,” Miles said.

Globally, under-five mortality rates have declined, from 90 to 46 deaths per 1,000 live births. However, these numbers, says the organisation, mask the fact that child survival is strictly linked to family wealth, and miss addressing the conditions of poverty and unhealthy life of slums.  

Positively, the report has also uncovered some successful solutions found by governments to reduce maternal and infant mortality, and close the inequality gap between rich and poor children in their own countries. The most successful countries are Ethiopia (Addis Ababa), Egypt (Cairo), Guatemala (Guatemala City), Uganda (Kampala), Philippines (Manila) and Cambodia (Phnom Penh).

“Ethiopia, which recently had accelerated economic growth, managed to develop effective targeting policies, and provided accessible preventive and curative health care for poor mothers and children,” Clay said.

“[Ethiopia] should be a blueprint for other countries, which should bring access to communities in slums so that local people are not left behind,” he underlined, adding that hiring urban outreach workers who can go into the communities, speak the language of the people living there and understand their conditions and needs is vital.

Save the Children is calling on national governments worldwide to find new policies and plans to invest in a universal maternal and infant health care, develop cross-sectoral urban plans, and reduce urban disadvantages, and to increase the focus on the Sustainable Development Goals in the post-2015 development agenda, concluded Miles.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

In Port Vila, capital of the southwest Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, low incomes and lack of housing has resulted in many of the 8,000 residents of the Freswota area building their own homes from corrugated iron and salvaged materials. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
PORT MORESBY, Jul 9 2014 (IPS)

While the United Nations claims to have met the Millennium Development Goal target of improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers well ahead of the 2020 deadline, the fact remains that millions around the world continue to live in informal, overcrowded and unsanitary housing conditions.

In the scenic western Pacific Islands, urban poverty is becoming a huge problem for resource-strapped governments, as internal migration spawns massive settlements, and communities jostle one another for scarce resources like water.

On paper, various governments’ commitments and promises suggest a blueprint for action but for the slum dwellers of the Pacific, each new day dawns in wretchedly cramped rooms, narrow alleyways and interminable lines for communal bathrooms.

While many of these informal settlements are lively and diverse places – playing host to government workers, students and market vendors – they remain a stark expression of the inequality that continues to plague developing countries as the sun sets on the U.N.’s ambitious poverty-reduction plan.

Chief Maki Massing stands outside his modest dwelling built of cement and corrugated iron in an informal housing settlement in Freswota, outside of Port Villa. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
PORT VILA, Jun 10 2014 (IPS)

Rapid migration to cities and towns, driven by scarce public services and jobs in rural areas, is producing a profound social shift in Pacific Island countries, where agrarian life has dominated for generations. But the urban dream remains elusive as a severe lack of housing forces many into sprawling, poorly-serviced informal settlements.

In the southwest Pacific Island state of Vanuatu, which has a population of 247,262, the urban growth rate is four percent, the second highest in the region after the Solomon Islands.

On the outskirts of the capital, Port Vila, with a population of 44,000, is Freswota, comprising six areas known as Freswota 1-6, which are home to an estimated 8,000 people.

Chief Maki Massing, originally from west Ambrym Island in the nation’s northern provinces, is a widower with six children who has lived in Freswota 4 for 30 years.

"If you don’t find work, you must go back to your island, because Port Vila is a very expensive town." -- Chief Maki Massing, community leader in Freswota
As the late afternoon sun fades, light bulbs strung across the front yard of his compound illuminate the house Massing built of cement and corrugated iron. Colourful lengths of fabric curtain the doorways. Early evening bustle fills the nearby street as he tells me why he left his rural village of Lalinda.

“My children came to Port Vila for school,” he explained. “As my income in the village from growing copra was not very good, I came here to find work so I can pay the school fees.”

Massing is fortunate to have landed a job in the formal sector. After working in a bank for 15 years, he joined the state ministry of health, where he has been employed since 1992.

The circumstances of most people in Freswota vary from permanent employment to informal labour (with people taking jobs as market vendors selling fresh produce) to unemployment, but they share one commonality: low incomes and poor living conditions.

Frank William at the Port Vila Municipality Council told IPS that land in the capital has not yet been zoned for specific development uses, such as residential or commercial, which has hindered urban planning progress. “Some public housing is available for people who come to Port Vila to work,” he said, “but people on low incomes are still unable to afford them.”

The average cost of a basic decent house lies somewhere in the range of 31,600-52,700 dollars, which is out of reach for many local residents living on the minimum monthly wage of roughly 316 dollars. The National Housing Corporation, which is under-resourced, sells land without housing development to residents in Freswota 3-6.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reports that 16.8 percent of government workers and 17.1 percent of private sector employees in Port Vila live below the poverty line.

“For me, it’s too expensive because I must also pay for water, electricity, transport and school fees,” Massing said. Even with a government job, he has to earn extra money by renting out two small rooms in his house.

Throughout the Pacific Islands the scale of rural to urban migration dramatically outpaces job growth, availability of land and state capacity to expand housing and public services.

Thirty-five percent of all Pacific Islanders, in a region with a population of 10 million, now live in towns and cities. In Vanuatu, 25 percent of the national population are urban residents and this is predicted to rise to 38 percent by 2030.

Lack of decent housing is worsening urban poverty, with 24 percent of all metropolitan residents in the Pacific Islands inhabiting slums. In Port Vila, one-third of children are impacted by poverty, which is 20 percent higher than the national average, reports the Pacific Islands Forum.

Leias Cullwick, executive director of the Vanuatu National Council of Women, claims that a low minimum wage and high cost of living in Port Vila are tipping families into severe hardship.

“Eighty percent of people in urban areas cannot even afford one decent meal per day. In the hospitals, 70 percent of the women giving birth cannot afford enough healthy food, so [their] babies are going to be malnourished,” she said.

People’s lives are also affected by lack of basic services. Massing claims that water, electricity and roads are urgently needed in Freswota 4.

“For the first five years here, I had to go down to the river every afternoon to wash and collect water to bring back to the house,” he said.

Traditional community leaders, such as Massing, are taking initiatives to address social and development issues in urban settlements.

“I talked to the government on behalf of my people and they then provided some water and electricity in this area,” he continued.

And while he understands the desires that drive people to Port Vila from rural areas, Massing believes that the city is not the best option for everyone.

“I bring everybody together here and talk to them and say you must work to stay here. If you don’t find work, you must go back to your island, because Port Vila is a very expensive town,” he said, emphasising the need to prevent destitution and crime.

According to the Pacific Islands Forum, state institutions need to take measures to improve urban planning and reform the housing market in the interests of those in most need.

Many Port Vila residents, including Massing and Cullwick, are also concerned about the misuse of public funds allocated to improving infrastructure and services. The Vanuatu Corruption Commission, established last year, has a mandate to address political and administrative mismanagement.

Proposing a bottom-up approach, Cullwick said traditional housing in villages could be better utilised for those marginalised in towns. She believes adapting traditional dwelling designs and using readily available natural building materials, such as thatch and bamboo, could reduce the cost of constructing a safe and healthy house.

In the meantime, Vanuatu has joined the UN-Habitat’s Participatory Slum Upgrading Programme (PSUP), which aims to improve urban living conditions and progress toward Millennium Development Goal 7 – bettering the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers by 2020. Urban profiles, part of Phase 1, are currently being drafted ahead of the next phases of planning and implementation.

(END)

Participants in Ellas Hacen share their experiences in the programme. Courtesy of Social Income with Work Programme in Morón

By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 12 2013 (IPS)

A new social programme launched by the Argentine government to fight hard-core poverty is providing unemployed mothers who are heads of households with education, training, work and an income.

“I told my oldest kids that they have to help me now because every morning I have to go to ‘Ellas Hacen’,” said Isabel Hernández, whose five children range in age from six to 16.

Ellas Hacen is the name of the latest Social Income with Work Programme implemented by the Ministry of Social Development. It specifically targets low-income unemployed women with at least three children, or a disabled child, who live in the poorest neighbourhoods.

Although she is taking part in the programme, Hernández still continues to collect used clothing to dress her children or to sell at low prices in her neighbourhood. But now she only does it on the weekends, because she is busy Monday through Friday in Ellas Hacen.

Up to now Hernández, who lives in a poor section of Don Torcuato, a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, has been doing odd jobs in the informal economy, while drawing the Universal Child Allowance (AUH).

The AUH is a cash transfer to parents who are unemployed or work in the informal sector of the economy. The allowance is conditional on school attendance and keeping up-to-date on vaccines and medical checkups. The programme, introduced by President Cristina Fernández in 2009, expanded the child allowance already received by formal sector workers.

The AUH currently amounts to 460 pesos (83 dollars) a month per child under 18 and 1,500 pesos (272 dollars) per disabled son or daughter of any age. Expectant mothers also receive the allowance, starting in the third month of pregnancy.

But the AUH programme, which now benefits 3.5 million poor children and adolescents in this country of 41 million people, is little more than a palliative in the case of mothers raising several children on their own, with no other source of income and unable to find a job because of a lack of formal education and training.

Ellas Hacen was launched in the middle of this year to reach these women, estimated to number around 100,000 across the country.

The beneficiaries receive 2,000 pesos (363 dollars) a month, on top of the AUH allowance that makes sure their children stay in school.

By registering in Ellas Hacen, the women become part of the social security system and payments are made towards a future pension. In addition, they and their families have the right to medical insurance known as “obra social” – a pay-as-you-go system based on compulsory payments by both employers and employees.

Thanks to the AUH and Ellas Hacen, the Hernández family is now above the poverty line.

The latest figures from the National Statistics and Census Institute indicate that 5.4 percent of the population is living in poverty and 1.5 percent in extreme poverty. But independent sources put the figure higher. The private Catholic University, for instance, estimated the poverty rate at 15.5 percent in July.

In exchange for the new income – Hernández has already received one paycheck – the women must attend daily literacy courses and finish primary or secondary school, depending on each specific case.

The programme also provides training for jobs in urban infrastructure works in shantytowns, the installation of water pipes and tanks, house painting, trash collection and separation, and the care of green spaces.

“We are also organising workshops on gender violence, and we are going to put a strong emphasis on the question of sexual and reproductive health and the care of children,” said Diego Landechea, social-labour director of the Social Income with Work Programme in Morón, another neighbourhood on the outskirts of the capital.

Landechea told IPS that 755 women between the ages of 18 and 62 had registered for Ellas Hacen so far in that neighbourhood, and that 70 percent already receive the AUH.

The others meet different eligibility criteria. For example, over 200 of them are victims of gender violence, while 15 have at least one disabled child, he added.

The group that registered in Morón includes five illiterate women, 80 who did not complete primary school, and 190 who did not finish their secondary studies.

“They never managed to enter the labour market, for different reasons,” said Landechea.

“Without a doubt, raising several children on their own is a fundamental factor in their exclusion from the formal market,” he said, although he also mentioned a lack of formal studies or training.

A census is carried out among the women who register, and commissions are created according to the most pressing needs found.

The first priority is to finish their studies. To that end, courses are offered at different times of day, to make it possible for them to attend class. Attendance is important: if they miss more than a certain number of classes, 350 of the 2,000 pesos (363 dollars) are discounted.

Hernández told IPS that she had finished primary school, and is now starting secondary school, through the programme. She knows she’ll have to get organised, because while she’s gone, the younger children will be left in the care of her 16-year-old son.

“The first thing I did when I got the 2,000 pesos was pay 900 that I owed in the local grocery shop and give my oldest son 300 pesos so he could buy some pants,” she said, adding that the idea was to encourage her son to give her a hand.

Up to now, the Social Income with Work Programme benefited 500,000 people who learned skills and trades and joined cooperatives, where they earn 2,000 pesos a month from the state until the cooperative becomes independent.

But although the programme was not exclusively for men, it has mainly served them because it has failed to take into account specific hurdles faced by mothers who are on their own, raising at least three young children, in slum neighbourhoods.

The social programmes that began to appear after the late Néstor Kirchner (1950-2010) took office in 2003 and that were continued by his widow, President Fernández, have drawn criticism from opposition political and labour leaders.

One of them is Hugo Moyano, the head of the Confederación General del Trabajo, Argentina’s largest trade union confederation, who quipped that the programmes were “take it easy plans” rather than work plans.

Moyano, who represents the faction of the labour movement most critical of the centre-left Fernández administration, made that comment in a July rally, where he called for the elimination of income tax, which affects the middle and upper classes.

The leaders of the Confederación Nacional de Cooperativas de Trabajo (CNCT), the national confederation of workers’ cooperatives, which was created under the Social Income with Work Programme, issued a statement accusing Moyano of slander.

The CNCT pointed out that in the past few years, the programme that has now incorporated women has enabled tens of thousands of people who were out of work to receive training and improve the living conditions in their communities.

The CNCT said the new cooperative members who organised thanks initially to public subsidies are now working in areas like public works, the textile industry, carpentry, transport, gastronomy and communication.

A youth smokes diamba (marijuana) at a gang base in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown. Credit: Tommy Trenchard/IPS

By Tommy Trenchard
FREETOWN, Jan 9 2013 (IPS)

The air is heavy with the smell of marijuana as Gibrilla (23) expertly rolls a large joint at the Members of Blood (M.O.B) gang base in a poor neighbourhood of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown.

He is part of a generation of young people faced with a chronic shortage of jobs, many of whom have turned to routine drug use as a way to pass the time and deal with the stresses of life in what is still one of the poorest countries in the world.

“Most of the young guys smoke diamba (marijuana) here,” says Gibrilla, gesturing towards the slum neighbourhood of Susan’s Bay. He says he has been smoking since he was 11, and usually smokes about 15 joints every day. “I have my first one at about five o’clock in the morning when I wake up,” he told IPS. “It makes me feel good.”

Sierra Leone’s high unemployment rate is fuelling a culture of drug use among the country’s urban youth. Experts say the trend is responsible for acts of violent crime, while medical practitioners are concerned about serious health repercussions for long-term users, which the country is poorly equipped to address.

In another part of the city, Patrick, who estimates his age as “twenty-something”, swigs from a plastic sachet of gin as he talks of his relationship with drugs.

“I use cocaine, marijuana, brown-brown (heroin) and liquor,” he told IPS. “I did not choose to live like this. I was living the street life…sometimes I did not even have somewhere to sleep. I had nothing.”

Patrick now feels he needs drugs and alcohol just to get through the day. “I feel hopeless when I don’t have them,” he explains.

His friend Alimu, heavily tattooed, with the initials of his gang shaved into his hair, speaks of a similar dependence. “I don’t want to stop,” he says. “I need it now.”

Alimu is not sure how much he takes every day, only that he spends all the money he can get on drugs and alcohol.

Assistant Superintendent of the Sierra Leone Police Force, Ibrahim Samura, says he is alarmed by the “spate of drug abuse and addiction”.

“It is worse than before…amphetamines, cannabis and heroin are all a problem,” he says, adding that cannabis is the most widely available. “Cannabis is now grown in almost every district. In some places in the north it is even used as a currency for barter.”

Samura says that there was a large increase in drug use and addiction during and after the country’s eleven-year civil war. “People used drugs to deal with the stress of war,” he explains.

Dr. Edward Nahim at his clinic in central Freetown. Credit: Tommy Trenchard/IPS

Dr. Edward Nahim has been working on drug and mental health issues in Sierra Leone for over 40 years. He agrees that the problem is, to some extent, linked to the civil war. “The conflict itself might be a contributing factor, because once you’ve learnt bad habits it becomes difficult (to stop).”

But he also says that drug addiction in Sierra Leone is tied to a lack of job opportunities. “It is more common amongst the unemployed vagrants, because they don’t have any work to do. (They) are the ones who spend most of their time in the…drug abuse bases or ghettos,” he says.

Impoverished and traumatised youth even use drugs just to “kill boredom”, Samura says.

Youth unemployment in Sierra Leone stands at a staggering 70 percent, according to the World Bank, and many drug users in Freetown say that if the government provides jobs for them, they will no longer feel the need to use drugs and alcohol.

“If I have a job I will stop smoking,” says Gibrilla. “But when I don’t go to work in the morning I just sit down and smoke diamba.”

Ibrahim Jones, a Susan’s Bay resident sporting a ‘Fight Against Drugs’ wristband, also thinks reducing unemployment is crucial to addressing drug use. “People smoke because there are no jobs,” he confirmed.

Samura says he is concerned about the relationship between illegal drugs and violent crime. He sees drug use as closely related to an increase in “gangsterism” in Sierra Leone.

“There are over 250 criminal gangs in this country,” he told IPS, displaying a list with names such as ‘Gang Killers’, ‘Blood Drain’, ‘Hisbola’ and ‘Da Elusive Thugs’.

He believes drug use “spurs them to behave abnormally and do things they wouldn’t do in their right senses.” On drugs, these young people “have the guts to kill, they’ll be brave (enough) to stab.”

The combination of high-grade cannabis and other drugs, together with cheap but potent local liquor, is also having severe mental health repercussions for long-term users.

“Drug abuse is a big problem in psychiatry in Sierra Leone today,” says Nahim, who runs a small mental health clinic in Freetown. He says around 80 percent of his patients, all of whom are between the ages of 10 and 35 years, are suffering from drug-induced psychotic disorders.

“By the time they get to about 40 years they are dead from the physical and psychological complications of these drugs,” he admits.

He adds that the problem is worst with young men, “but the girls are catching up now”.

Sierra Leone lacks the means to effectively treat such victims of drug and alcohol-induced psychosis. Nahim uses what he calls the “cold-turkey method” to treat addicts, physically restraining them and administering “very strong tranquilising drugs” for sedation. “Then after ten days it’s over,” he says.

But relapse rates are high. After treatment there are few safeguards to prevent patients slipping back into drug use.

City of Rest Rehabilitation Centre  is one of only a handful of establishments catering to drug users and the mentally ill on a longer-term basis. More than half of its 40 inpatients are suffering from drug-related problems.

It is run by Pastor Morie Ngobeh, who uses religion and counselling to treat individuals with drug-induced mental conditions. “We rely on prayer, for God to renew their minds,” he says.

Abdulai Bah’s family admitted him to City of Rest to deal with his chronic alcoholism. It is the second time he has been a patient there, but he feels that with a job waiting for him he will be able to stay off alcohol when he leaves in January.

“Some of my relatives promised to help me start my own business. If I start to get myself engaged, I will not drink alcohol again,” he says with conviction.

(END)

According to the World Bank, the urban poor in Sri Lanka are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
PANSALGOLLA, Sri Lanka, Oct 28 2012 (IPS)

The old adage ‘nature is the great equaliser’ no longer holds true in countries like Sri Lanka, where the poor bear the brunt of extreme weather events.

Gamhevage Dayananda, a farmer from the remote village of Pansalgolla in Sri Lanka’s north-central Polonnaruwa district, can attest to this reality, as he and his fellow farmers struggle to survive alternating periods of drought and flooding.

Unexpectedly heavy rains in February 2011 forced engineers to open the sluice gates of large irrigation tanks in the area, flooding hectare upon hectare of farmland, including Dayananda’s modest plot.

He lost his entire rice harvest, no small setback for his family of four who depend on this crop for their very survival.

This year, Dayananda found himself facing another crisis when drought destroyed his crop and put him at risk of falling deeper into debt.

“One season it’s all rain, next it’s all sun,” Dayananda told IPS. “There is nothing in moderation, it is all in extremes.”

The trend of extreme weather events alternating year after year is unlikely to change, according to W L Sumathipala, former head of the climate change unit at the Ministry of Environment, adding that Sri Lanka is at the receiving end of changing climate patterns.

Last year’s annual report for the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) noted, “Climate-related emergencies, such as those linked to drought, floods, and storms, expose the poor and most vulnerable to hazards that have lasting consequences for the health, livelihoods, and well-being of people who have the least capacity to cope with and mitigate the effects of natural disasters.”

Widespread poverty

Currently about 8.9 percent of this South Asian island nation’s 21 million people live below the poverty line.

Of these, according to Abha Joshi-Ghani, head of the World Bank’s Urban Development and Local Government Unit, “the poor in urban areas are likely to be affected more by the changing climate patterns. They are the most vulnerable because they live in sensitive areas, on precarious land where no one else will settle.”

The British-based charity Homeless International estimates that 12 percent of Sri Lanka’s urban population of about three million can be found in slums.

Defence and Urban Development Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa was recently quoted as saying that shanty dwellers in the capital Colombo can be found “mostly on government lands”.

“Many of them are on the reservations set aside around the lakes, canals, roadways, and railway tracks,” he added.

The biggest threat to this population is the flash flood. Since 2007, the nation’s capital – along with other parts of the western region – has already been submerged more than two dozen times.

Some areas end up under water after just 30 minutes of heavy rain, as was experienced during the third week of October.

This situation can be traced in part to the capital’s compromised drainage capacity. But increasingly heavy downpours over the years have made matters worse, particularly since there are no signs this trend will let up anytime soon.

In its Second National Communication on Climate Change 2012, the environment ministry says that Colombo and the rest of the western plains can only expect more wet days ahead, with “intense” periods of rain.

By contrast, rice farmers are probably going to have to deal with long dry spells for some time to come. According to the environment ministry, the agrarian areas in parts of the east and northern provinces, including Polonnaruwa, will not only get less rain than they need, they will also experience higher temperatures.

The Central Bank estimates that a 0.5-degree Celsius rise in temperatures could reduce rice yields by around five percent.

Thus it should come as no surprise that an Asian Development Bank report last year identified climate change as the “greatest threat to food security”.

Local sustainable development expert Riza Yehiya also warned, “Food security fluctuations due to climate change will be accompanied by unsteady energy security, modern society’s greatest prerequisite (next to food and water).”

“The combined effects of this triumvirate – water, food, and energy insecurity – will render poorer sections of society extremely vulnerable unless social security for this sector is beefed up as part of the climate change mitigation programme.”

Last April, farmers in Polonnaruwa took to the streets after irrigation engineers stopped providing water because of the drought. At the time, the farmers said more than 16,000 hectares of paddy fields feeding off the Parakarama Samudarya irrigation tank were already in danger of going completely dry.

After being hit by floods in the early part of 2011, which destroyed over 16,000 hectares of paddy fields and roughly ten percent of the early harvest, rice farmers in the north and north-central regions are now facing the opposite end of that spectrum.

Severe drought during the first nine months of 2012 affected 1.3 million people, a rapid assessment by the World Food Programme (WFP) found.

Experts have estimated that close to 29 percent of an estimated harvest of 1.1 million metric tones will be lost, while 76,000 hectares, or 19 percent of the planted crop has already been destroyed.

“Preliminary findings indicate substantial livelihood impact on a broad spectrum of the population and a deterioration of food security,” according to the WFP Global Food Security Update for October.

Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, a prominent economist, believes that unemployment could be as high as 20 percent in some parts of the Northern Province, though no government data exists to support this view.

*This story was produced as part of IPS Asia-Pacific’s ‘Climate Change: A Reporting Lens from Asia’ series.

Karachi is prone to floods. Credit: Muhammad Arshad/IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Sep 6 2012 (IPS)

Climate proofing this bustling port city is a daunting task for planners who must consider factors ranging from proneness to flooding and administrative malaise to the fact that 60 percent of its 18 million people live in slums.

The Economist Intelligence Unit in its latest global survey of living conditions released in August rated Karachi as the seventh least liveable city, placing it 134th in the world out of a list of 140 countries.

Farhan Anwar, an engineer and urban planner, argues that the recently notified Climate Change Policy for Pakistan directs attention mostly to agriculture, forestry and water resources and glosses over the special needs of urban settlements.

Anwar, lead author of the report, ‘Karachi city climate change adaptation strategy: A roadmap’, published in April, warns that if urgent action is not taken Karachi may turn into a cauldron of “social and ethnic tensions”.

Anwar believes that climate change preparedness for Karachi starts with an understanding of its political economy, its vulnerable and threatened communities, assets and biodiversity. This would require a detailed and comprehensive mapping of land use and ownership, utilities, transport networks and constructions.

“Unresolved political conflicts and turf battles over control of city assets and services that lead to, among other things, fragmentation and decay in terms of legitimacy, credibility and functional effectiveness of the critical institutions of governance such as city government, land control agencies, civic utilities” are some of the ills that have befallen Karachi, Anwar tells IPS.

Although the city’s management infrastructure is teetering and its over-stretched civic services are at breaking point, Karachi accounts for 95 percent of Pakistan’s foreign trade and contributes to 30 percent of the national industrial production.

Karachi, the report said, is prone to flooding, thanks to overflowing rivers, rainwater and choked sewers. Except for a 12-mile embankment along Malir river, most of the city remains defenceless against inundation.

According to an Asian Development Bank report, ‘Addressing Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific’, released in March, Karachi is at high risk from sea-level rise, prolonged cyclonic activity, and salt-water intrusion.

In 1977, severe floods occurred in the flood plains of the Malir and Lyari rivers, resulting in 267 deaths with more than 30,000 people made homeless and 100,000 temporarily dislocated, according to Karachi Development Authority records.

Despite the known dangers, no effective policy exists to prevent settlements in the riverbeds and encroachments on drainage channels, and already this is adversely impacting flood prevention and management.

It is not just the poor and vulnerable squatting in flood prone zones and Karachi’s fishing communities that suffer. “Sensitive national installations are exposed to tidal flooding,” Anwar’s report said.

There is no provision to store the flood waters and no effort has been made to promote water conservation, waste-water recycling or rainwater harvesting practices, the report says.

Karachi also has no effective policy in place to deal with disasters and there are critical gaps and shortcomings in emergency response systems such as trauma facilities, fire services, law and order, evacuation plans and facilities.

Anwar says city planners and managers must have a “focused plan” within the context of a ‘climate change adaptation strategy’ that can act as a planning framework.

“However,” he tells IPS, “in the long run, climate change related policies and plans” would have to be embedded within the internal working of relevant institutions to give sustainability to the process.

Part of the problem why this sprawling urban metropolis has such poor governance is because of highly decentralised administration when it comes to control over land and provision of services.

Karachi’s squatters not only live on land they do not own but also steal water from the mainline through suction pumps run on power tapped illegally while the city police looks the other way.

At the upper end of the social strata, the affluent of Karachi have found a way around collapsing urban infrastructure by paying extra for water, electricity and security.

With just seven percent of vegetation cover; factories and vehicles spewing thick, black smoke; heaps of unmanaged garbage piling up and rivers turning into sewage disposal channels, Karachi is rapidly turning sick.

“In order to borrow from the Asian Development Bank, our city planners build, neglect and rebuild,” said Arif Pervaiz, a Karachi-based environmental specialist who has worked extensively on climate change. “They try to fix management problems through brick and mortar solutions.”

“For example, to address traffic congestion,” said Pervaiz, “flyovers and underpasses are built, but what is not considered is the broader traffic management issue.”

“I think one major unified authority that coordinates the running of the city is imperative,” said Pervaiz, who finds Anwar’s report a timely reminder to policy makers of the urgent need to implement climate change adaptation plans.

“It’s frustrating. Residents of Karachi do not know which government department to approach for redressal of civic problems in their area,” he said. “Sometimes, even officials in a particular department do not know where its jurisdiction begins and ends.”

While terming Anwar’s report “hugely important,” Ali Tauqir Sheikh, Climate Development and Knowledge Network’s Asia director, told IPS that it fails to “build upon the Karachi city government’s capacity and experience.”

“I am also not sure about the usability and benefit of the report unless the city government’s institutions and other stakeholders are consulted,” commented Sheikh who heads Leadership for Environment and Development, a prominent non-government organisation in Pakistan.

Tembari Children’s Care is providing protection, food and education to orphans and abandoned children in Port Moresby. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
PORT MORESBY, Jul 17 2012 (IPS)

In an informal settlement of 10,000 people on the outskirts of Papua New Guinea’s capital, Port Moresby, Tembari Children’s Care – a new grassroots initiative – is providing protection, food and education to orphans and abandoned children who would otherwise join the high numbers of child labourers in this Melanesian country.

Hayward Sagembo and his wife, Penny, who live in Nine Mile Settlement, became deeply concerned by the numbers of children neglected and orphaned due to their parents dying of AIDS or other causes.

“So we decided to start an organisation that would help some of them,” Sagembo told IPS. “Tembari Children’s Care started underneath our house in 2003 and we managed it there for eight years.”

With the contribution of two shipping containers by the Papua New Guinean Digicel Foundation, which have been converted into classrooms, and donations of food and materials by local businesses, the centre is able to provide the most vulnerable children with daily meals, school fees and some clothes.  Elementary to pre-school education is provided to 120 young children and day care to 280 who are homeless.

“Most of the children are malnourished and since they have been in our care their health has really improved,” Sagembo continued. “Through our early education programme, they have gained confidence and gone on to schools where they have won prizes.”

But he emphasised there were many more children in need.

“Sixty percent of children in the settlement are vulnerable and TCC is the only children’s centre at Nine Mile.  We are able to help 3-4 out of 10 children.  If our centre did not exist, these children would be living on the streets without shelter and resorting to child labour to survive,” he said.

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the Asia Pacific region, which is the most child populous region in the world, is home to the largest number of child labourers aged 5-17 years, even though number of children in employment in the region declined from 122.3 million in 2004 to 96.4 million in 2008.

Earlier this year the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) and TACKLE – a four-year joint project between the European Union, the African, Caribbean and Pacific group (ACP) Secretariat and the ILO to fight child labour through education initiatives – released a report on child labour in Papua new Guinea.

Between 2010 and 2011, the report team surveyed children working on the streets and those involved in commercial sexual exploitation in Port Moresby and found that children comprise 19 percent of the nation’s labour market of 2.5 economically active people.

The findings of the report were based on a survey of 404 children in the capital. Accurate national statistics on child labour are still unknown.

Most of those interviewed were not attending school and were involved in the worst forms of child labour, including prostitution and illicit activities, such as stealing.  Sixty eight percent were doing hazardous work, such as controlling traffic, scavenging for scrap metal, working long hours and suffering physical and verbal abuse.

The prevalence of children working on the streets is exacerbated by domestic violence and abuse, family breakdown, adult unemployment, as well as political instability, weak state governance and the negative repercussions of structural adjustment programmes.

But the main cause of child labour in Port Moresby is urban poverty. Approximately 20 squatter settlements emerge every year in the capital, in wasteland areas lacking clean water and sanitation. These makeshift slums have become home to more than half the city’s population of 500,000.

Rapid urbanisation, due to rural migrants seeking employment and access to health and education, has not been matched by development in infrastructure, affordable housing and public services.

The report claims most street children are from settlements where the average salary is between 62-156 dollars per month.  Poverty is worsened by the rising cost of living and a meagre minimum hourly wage of 2.29 kina (just over a dollar), resulting in many children forsaking their right to education in order to work and contribute to their own survival or that of their family.

This year, the government introduced a policy of “tuition fee-free education” for all students from Elementary Prep to Year 10 in secondary school. But according to Larry George at City Mission PNG, a stakeholder organisation in the child labour report, “It may have some impact, but the poor families in the settlements will still be hungry and may even keep their children home from school if there is a chance of sending them out to earn money.”

Despite Papua New Guinea having ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), ILO Convention No. 138 on the minimum working age and No. 182 on the worst forms of child labour, the state is struggling to provide adequate protection to its children who are some of the most vulnerable in the world.

The ILO report also observed that “although laws do exist on child labour…..these laws were usually silent and implementation of these laws was unsatisfactory”.

In 2009 the government introduced the Lukautim Pikinini (Child Protection) Act which provides for holding parents and businesses accountable if found guilty of facilitating harmful child labour.

“The idea of the Act is good, but funding has not been given for (its) implementation,” George told IPS.  “In Lae, for example, there are only about three social workers to cover the whole (Morobe) province.  They are overworked, under-funded and work in dilapidated offices with no transport available.”

In a foreword to the report, the Minister for Labour and Industrial Relations, Martin Aini, declared, “Our country’s fundamental values, principles and hopes for the future are slowly being eroded by our half-hearted approach towards addressing the issues surrounding child labour.”

The report’s authors recommend addressing child labour with increased access to education, better law enforcement and social security for the poor. In addition, a report by the Asian Development Bank on street children in the Asia Pacific region advocates the need for behavioural change in adults in regard to children’s rights, health and education outreach work on the streets and more temporary accommodation and vocational skills training to enable homeless children to transit out of a marginalised existence.

But action to address widespread poverty is also essential, such as reviewing the minimum wage, raising standards of housing and basic services and tackling the corrosive impact of corruption which includes an increasing inequality gap.  Otherwise, the perceived need for child labour will continue.

(END)