Working with Government
The success of OPP’s extensive low cost sanitation programme in Karachi’s working class settlement of Orangi demonstrates that low income communities can finance and manage the construction of an underground sanitation system at the neighbourhood level if they are provided technical support and social guidance and if government can undertake the development and maintenance of trunk sewers and treatment plants.
In this book, Arif Hasan, Pakistan’s renowned architect and OPP’s principal consultant, describes OPP’s collaboration with government and international development agencies in attempting to replicate its sanitation programme in the low income areas of three Pakistani cities. This in-depth study analyses the actors and processes involved in this collaboration. It brings out that government and international agencies are generally incapable of relating to the realities of urban communities. The communities, on the other hand, are resourceful, realistic and capable of improving their living conditions with social and technical support from concerned individuals and organisations.