The slums of Karachi.In poor, crowded conditions like these, the pollution of air and water resources can cause economic hardship and disease on a massive scale.Perhaps the most damaging form of pollution is the contamination of water resources by human wastes throughout the developing world.Inadequate sanitation causes millions of unnecessary deaths each year and brings suffering to 10s of 1,000,000 more.And the problem could get worse.Over the next 40 years, the urban population of developing countries will grow to at least 2 1/2 times its present size.By the millennium's end, there will be 21 cities with more than 10 million residents.17 of them will be in the developing world.The price in human suffering could be overwhelming, but around the globe, and in Karachi's Orangi district in particular, there are signs that environmental disaster is very much avoidable.Orangi is the largest squatter settlement in Karachi, with a population estimated at around 1,000,000.Policy makers and development agencies usually assume that the residents of communities like Orangi cannot afford the costs of installing sewerage systems.The assumption does not seem unreasonable.The average cost of installing in house sanitation in Karachi is around $1000 per family.Nonetheless, as one highly innovative non governmental organization has convincingly demonstrated, the assumption is wrong.The Arangi pilot project was begun by Doctor Akhtar Hamid Khan, a well known Pakistani community organizer.Significantly, when Doctor Khan first began to involve himself in Arangi, he started with no preset agenda.He decided he would listen to the community to discover their own development priorities and then work with them to achieve their ends.Doctor Khan soon discovered that the community's overriding concern was their lack of decent sanitation services.The community's own definition of development encompassed first and foremost, the resolution of an environmental problem.They asked Doctor Khan to petition the municipal authorities to provide sewerage and eventually, after months of unsuccessful efforts to involve the Karachi Development Authority, Doctor Khan achieved his first success.What we did is that we began to look attentively at what is going on in Orem.Our approach was that after having studied what the people were doing, we will help them to do it in a better way, in a more efficient way, in a more scientific way, and that is the approach which has been demonstrated in Sanitation.Doctor Khan persuaded the community that they could realize their aims directly without government assistance.But convincing the community residents was not easy.We found a kind of psychological barrier to over approach.At first it seemed very difficult, but when we explained to them that, look, what is your experience, so many promises have been made to you.Have those promises been fulfilled?And whatever work you have done, have you not done it yourself?So it took us about a year to cross this psychological barrier.In 1980 the Orangi Pilot project was born.12 years later, it has brought sewerage services to over 600,000 slum dwellers and other cities have begun to duplicate its methods.My name is Parveen Rahman by education.I am an architect.I am responsible at OPP for the ongoing works on low cost sanitation and health and here we are not only working with the communities, but we are working with the government.Where the community and the government are partners in development, That where the government can do things they should do and where the people can do things, they should be left to take care of that responsibility themselves.And this is the new way to development.The formula of the project's success has been innovative, but straightforward Community involvement tied to impressive technical input from OPP SCORE group of professional engineers and architects has eliminated corruption and brought the costs of in house sewerage provision down to less than $50 per family.The contrast with conditions before the project's inception could hardly be more dramatic.In the transformation of Orangi, OPP's staff has played a vital catalytic role.The engineers, architects and planners organize community meetings, explain the benefits of good quality sanitation to Arangi residents, and provide technical assistance in constructing and maintaining sewers.The government's stereotype that the poor people are too poor to do things for themselves and therefore everything has to be provided for them is not at all accepted by the poor people themselves.The poor people, on the other hand, believe, really believe, although they do not say so, is that they will have to look after themselves and they are in a position to do it, but they did not know how to do it.And we help them.And I think it was for the first time that professional people help the poor people in sanitation.For their part, community members finance their share of construction and maintenance costs and provide their own labor.Project staff members never handle the community's money directly.Community members, aware of the numerous advantages of decent sanitation, not least of which is its effect on property values, finance the project and contrary to the received wisdom, they have opted to provide themselves with high standard sewerage services.Traditionally, sewerage has been provided at a centralized level first, spreading to the local level only as a subsequent and secondary concern.In Orangi, the first priority has always been to remove waste from streets and neighborhoods.As the power of the organization has grown, residents have been able to persuade the municipality to provide the external or trunk elements of the sewer system to complement the community's provision and maintenance of the local feeder elements.Municipal contractors have found themselves serving an increasingly knowledgeable population that understands sanitation technology, appreciates good quality work, and knows what the cost should be.Accountability has stimulated efficiency and responsiveness.The initially adversarial relationship between the Arangi project and the authorities has been gradually transformed into a cooperative 1.The feeder out approach to the Orangi sewer system's construction is reflected in the project's bottom up organizational approach catalyzed by the OPP staff.Residents elect lane managers, who typically represent around 15 households.Lane managers supervise St.level maintenance and ensure that households meet their labor and financial commitment to the project, and they also form neighborhood committees to oversee the maintenance of secondary sewers.At every level of the project, local values and local involvement are very clearly in evidence.The importance of the organizational innovations of the Arangi project cannot be overstated.Other cities in the developing world have made use of technological innovations similar to those employed in Arangi, but only to limited effect because the vital necessity of community involvement has largely gone unrecognized.The people have spent most of the money themselves.You can see this in itself shows how determined the people are and how careful they are also about their own.Money, which they are.Investing, working here in the mud and the film does not just represent.The hardship.But it represents the fact that people are considerate of each other and people take care when they do the work.They take care of it, they have identified with it and that's why they've worked for it.Good engineering alone, important though it has been at Arangi, cannot guarantee results.One of OPP's original collaborators has stuck with the traditional top down, non participatory approach of public services provision.Thus far, their achievements have been revealingly limited and expensive.There is no way the government could have made these lanes which are now so clean and which are being maintained by the people.So here is the differentiation that people, when they can work close to their houses, when they do the internal work, they do it really well and they also take care of it.What makes this place unique is that people here have considered their problems to be their responsibility.They have on self help solve the problems of sanitation and health without waiting for any government support.It's hard for some people to believe that people can do work themselves, but Orangi has proved it.We'd like to see that how people have solved the problems in Orangi.Likewise, everywhere else where there are poor people, they can take responsibility for their own problems and solve it without waiting for anybody else's support.The project's success has had wider ramifications throughout Pakistan.Other municipal authorities have begun to duplicate OPP's methods.Government, as one of OPP's senior level staff puts it, has been persuaded to start behaving like an NGO.The Orangi model has also been duplicated by the OPP itself.For other sectors besides sanitation, project organizers have begun to catalyze participation in housing, health and income generation programs.In Pakistan, women play a significant role in many household activities related to public health.Water for the woman is their responsibility, much more than the responsibility of the men.Clean water in a home is what a woman identifies with and that's why it's very important that any plan which is made out is discussed in detail with the woman.And considering our social structure, how there is a lot of segregation between the men and the woman South, it's very important that you have female planners, women planners talking to the woman and getting their ideas.As with the original project, the emphasis throughout has been on listening to community concerns and developing participatory solutions that lower costs, eliminate corruption, and create collaborative relations with public authorities.The core of the program remains to promote active community involvement.And the essence of a work or the essence of any of our programs, the health of the sanitation is the breakthrough that the team makes with the people.And the team is considered to be a friend of the people.The importance of OPP is twofold.Not only has it measurably improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of slum dwellers, but it has demonstrated the viability of community based solutions to an environmental and developmental problem that the governments of developing countries have not been able to resolve alone.The growth of cities in developing countries around the world presents a major challenge for development and for Environmental Protection.Although the achievements of the last decade have been impressive, the number of people without adequate sanitation services in urban areas of developing countries actually increased over the course of the 1980's.The model that Doctor Akhtar Khan and the residents of Arangi have so successfully set in motion undoubtedly holds out hope for reversing this trend.The lesson that the Orangi pilot project provides is one that developing countries and development agencies cannot afford to ignore.Music.
Orangi Pilot Project
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Timed Transcript
0:00:20.76
The slums of Karachi.
0:00:28.64
In poor, crowded conditions like these, the pollution of air and water resources can cause economic hardship and disease on a massive scale.
0:00:41.04
Perhaps the most damaging form of pollution is the contamination of water resources by human wastes throughout the developing world.
0:00:54.32
Inadequate sanitation causes millions of unnecessary deaths each year and brings suffering to 10s of 1,000,000 more.
0:01:05.64
And the problem could get worse.
0:01:14.24
Over the next 40 years, the urban population of developing countries will grow to at least 2 1/2 times its present size.
0:01:30.32
By the millennium's end, there will be 21 cities with more than 10 million residents.
0:01:37.88
17 of them will be in the developing world.
0:01:52.74
The price in human suffering could be overwhelming, but around the globe, and in Karachi's Orangi district in particular, there are signs that environmental disaster is very much avoidable.
0:02:44.24
Orangi is the largest squatter settlement in Karachi, with a population estimated at around 1,000,000.
0:02:59.84
Policy makers and development agencies usually assume that the residents of communities like Orangi cannot afford the costs of installing sewerage systems.
0:03:11.92
The assumption does not seem unreasonable.
0:03:15.36
The average cost of installing in house sanitation in Karachi is around $1000 per family.
0:03:24.08
Nonetheless, as one highly innovative non governmental organization has convincingly demonstrated, the assumption is wrong.
0:03:35.52
The Arangi pilot project was begun by Doctor Akhtar Hamid Khan, a well known Pakistani community organizer.
0:03:44.4
Significantly, when Doctor Khan first began to involve himself in Arangi, he started with no preset agenda.
0:03:51.96
He decided he would listen to the community to discover their own development priorities and then work with them to achieve their ends.
0:04:05.38
Doctor Khan soon discovered that the community's overriding concern was their lack of decent sanitation services.
0:04:13.02
The community's own definition of development encompassed first and foremost, the resolution of an environmental problem.
0:04:21.6
They asked Doctor Khan to petition the municipal authorities to provide sewerage and eventually, after months of unsuccessful efforts to involve the Karachi Development Authority, Doctor Khan achieved his first success.
0:04:37.84
What we did is that we began to look attentively at what is going on in Orem.
0:04:47.92
Our approach was that after having studied what the people were doing, we will help them to do it in a better way, in a more efficient way, in a more scientific way, and that is the approach which has been demonstrated in Sanitation.
0:05:13.24
Doctor Khan persuaded the community that they could realize their aims directly without government assistance.
0:05:21.88
But convincing the community residents was not easy.
0:05:26.12
We found a kind of psychological barrier to over approach.
0:05:32.92
At first it seemed very difficult, but when we explained to them that, look, what is your experience, so many promises have been made to you.
0:05:44.8
Have those promises been fulfilled?
0:05:47.88
And whatever work you have done, have you not done it yourself?
0:05:52.88
So it took us about a year to cross this psychological barrier.
0:06:02.16
In 1980 the Orangi Pilot project was born.
0:06:06.28
12 years later, it has brought sewerage services to over 600,000 slum dwellers and other cities have begun to duplicate its methods.
0:06:17.44
My name is Parveen Rahman by education.
0:06:20.28
I am an architect.
0:06:21.4
I am responsible at OPP for the ongoing works on low cost sanitation and health and here we are not only working with the communities, but we are working with the government.
0:06:33.28
Where the community and the government are partners in development, That where the government can do things they should do and where the people can do things, they should be left to take care of that responsibility themselves.
0:06:45
And this is the new way to development.
0:06:48.56
The formula of the project's success has been innovative, but straightforward Community involvement tied to impressive technical input from OPP SCORE group of professional engineers and architects has eliminated corruption and brought the costs of in house sewerage provision down to less than $50 per family.
0:07:14.6
The contrast with conditions before the project's inception could hardly be more dramatic.
0:07:48.8
In the transformation of Orangi, OPP's staff has played a vital catalytic role.
0:07:55.16
The engineers, architects and planners organize community meetings, explain the benefits of good quality sanitation to Arangi residents, and provide technical assistance in constructing and maintaining sewers.
0:08:12.96
The government's stereotype that the poor people are too poor to do things for themselves and therefore everything has to be provided for them is not at all accepted by the poor people themselves.
0:08:28.88
The poor people, on the other hand, believe, really believe, although they do not say so, is that they will have to look after themselves and they are in a position to do it, but they did not know how to do it.
0:08:46.68
And we help them.
0:08:49.48
And I think it was for the first time that professional people help the poor people in sanitation.
0:09:03.2
For their part, community members finance their share of construction and maintenance costs and provide their own labor.
0:09:11.12
Project staff members never handle the community's money directly.
0:09:15.56
Community members, aware of the numerous advantages of decent sanitation, not least of which is its effect on property values, finance the project and contrary to the received wisdom, they have opted to provide themselves with high standard sewerage services.
0:09:40.36
Traditionally, sewerage has been provided at a centralized level first, spreading to the local level only as a subsequent and secondary concern.
0:09:49.84
In Orangi, the first priority has always been to remove waste from streets and neighborhoods.
0:09:58.24
As the power of the organization has grown, residents have been able to persuade the municipality to provide the external or trunk elements of the sewer system to complement the community's provision and maintenance of the local feeder elements.
0:10:15
Municipal contractors have found themselves serving an increasingly knowledgeable population that understands sanitation technology, appreciates good quality work, and knows what the cost should be.
0:10:28.12
Accountability has stimulated efficiency and responsiveness.
0:10:32.44
The initially adversarial relationship between the Arangi project and the authorities has been gradually transformed into a cooperative 1.
0:10:48.6
The feeder out approach to the Orangi sewer system's construction is reflected in the project's bottom up organizational approach catalyzed by the OPP staff.
0:11:05.64
Residents elect lane managers, who typically represent around 15 households.
0:11:13.92
Lane managers supervise St.
0:11:15.8
level maintenance and ensure that households meet their labor and financial commitment to the project, and they also form neighborhood committees to oversee the maintenance of secondary sewers.
0:11:44.24
At every level of the project, local values and local involvement are very clearly in evidence.
0:12:16.36
The importance of the organizational innovations of the Arangi project cannot be overstated.
0:12:22.64
Other cities in the developing world have made use of technological innovations similar to those employed in Arangi, but only to limited effect because the vital necessity of community involvement has largely gone unrecognized.
0:13:00.72
The people have spent most of the money themselves.
0:13:04.76
You can see this in itself shows how determined the people are and how careful they are also about their own.
0:13:12.56
Money, which they are.
0:13:13.32
Investing, working here in the mud and the film does not just represent.
0:13:21.16
The hardship.
0:13:22.08
But it represents the fact that people are considerate of each other and people take care when they do the work.
0:13:29.32
They take care of it, they have identified with it and that's why they've worked for it.
0:13:43.2
Good engineering alone, important though it has been at Arangi, cannot guarantee results.
0:13:51.16
One of OPP's original collaborators has stuck with the traditional top down, non participatory approach of public services provision.
0:14:01.04
Thus far, their achievements have been revealingly limited and expensive.
0:14:13.24
There is no way the government could have made these lanes which are now so clean and which are being maintained by the people.
0:14:23.28
So here is the differentiation that people, when they can work close to their houses, when they do the internal work, they do it really well and they also take care of it.
0:14:38.12
What makes this place unique is that people here have considered their problems to be their responsibility.
0:14:44.52
They have on self help solve the problems of sanitation and health without waiting for any government support.
0:14:51.24
It's hard for some people to believe that people can do work themselves, but Orangi has proved it.
0:14:58
We'd like to see that how people have solved the problems in Orangi.
0:15:02.08
Likewise, everywhere else where there are poor people, they can take responsibility for their own problems and solve it without waiting for anybody else's support.
0:15:13.2
The project's success has had wider ramifications throughout Pakistan.
0:15:19.64
Other municipal authorities have begun to duplicate OPP's methods.
0:15:24.52
Government, as one of OPP's senior level staff puts it, has been persuaded to start behaving like an NGO.
0:15:36.08
The Orangi model has also been duplicated by the OPP itself.
0:15:40.32
For other sectors besides sanitation, project organizers have begun to catalyze participation in housing, health and income generation programs.
0:16:00.04
In Pakistan, women play a significant role in many household activities related to public health.
0:16:08.84
Water for the woman is their responsibility, much more than the responsibility of the men.
0:16:14.16
Clean water in a home is what a woman identifies with and that's why it's very important that any plan which is made out is discussed in detail with the woman.
0:16:25.52
And considering our social structure, how there is a lot of segregation between the men and the woman South, it's very important that you have female planners, women planners talking to the woman and getting their ideas.
0:16:42.36
As with the original project, the emphasis throughout has been on listening to community concerns and developing participatory solutions that lower costs, eliminate corruption, and create collaborative relations with public authorities.
0:16:57.92
The core of the program remains to promote active community involvement.
0:17:03.44
And the essence of a work or the essence of any of our programs, the health of the sanitation is the breakthrough that the team makes with the people.
0:17:11.76
And the team is considered to be a friend of the people.
0:17:20.8
The importance of OPP is twofold.
0:17:24.2
Not only has it measurably improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of slum dwellers, but it has demonstrated the viability of community based solutions to an environmental and developmental problem that the governments of developing countries have not been able to resolve alone.
0:17:50.36
The growth of cities in developing countries around the world presents a major challenge for development and for Environmental Protection.
0:18:00.52
Although the achievements of the last decade have been impressive, the number of people without adequate sanitation services in urban areas of developing countries actually increased over the course of the 1980's.
0:18:15.6
The model that Doctor Akhtar Khan and the residents of Arangi have so successfully set in motion undoubtedly holds out hope for reversing this trend.
0:18:26.44
The lesson that the Orangi pilot project provides is one that developing countries and development agencies cannot afford to ignore.
0:19:11.16
Music.
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Detail
-
Title
Orangi Pilot Project
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Description
Informational video about the Orangi Pilot Project, a program to improve housing and sanitation in the Orangi district of Karachi, Pakistan. Note on container: "Streets of Hope."
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Creator
World Bank Group/Telenova
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Date
1992
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Filename
30158658 - Oranji - Streets of Hope - Pakistan.mp4
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Usage Terms
The records that were created by the staff of The World Bank are subject to the Bank’s copyright. Please refer to http://www.worldbank.org/terms-of-use-earchives for full copyright terms of use and disclaimers.