Fiji: Poorest of the poor live in shanty towns

Namadi Heights is one of Suva’s exclusive suburbs where some of Fiji’s rich and famous supposedly live. A small children’s park forms part of its eastern border, along one of the capital’s busy thoroughfares, Mead Road.

Growing... squatter settlements in Fiji are on the rise.

Yet it is unclear to whom the park’s swings and see-saws were built for; for the spoilt children of Namadi’s rich or was it meant for their deprived ‘cousins’ who live around a large city drain that runs through a gully, just below the park?

This Mead Road squatter settlement is one of almost 200 that in recent times have become part of the landscape of Fiji’s towns and cities.

University of the South Pacific academic Manoranjan Mohanty quoted a 2005 Fiji Government report which said the country’s squatter population rose by 78% between 1999 to 2003.

Of the more than 80,000 then identified as “squatters,” about 60% of them live between Suva and its northern town of Nausori.

On a study of the income status of those living in these squatter settlements in 2002 and 2003, Mohanty said he found people in four main categories. These were:
• poorest people with absolute poverty, unemployed or survivors based on social welfare assistance or a pension.
• people with some skills, self-employed and largely engaged in informal activities.
• people with formal employment/salary earners and with relatively higher standard of living.
• displaced farming families due to land expiry of their leased lands.

“According to the survey, a large proportion of squatter households (40%) in Suva City lived in absolute poverty and without assets of any kind,” wrote Mohanty in his report.

“Nearly 47% of indigenous Fijians and 35% of Indo-Fijian squatter households were without assets.”
Shiu (his name has been changed) and his family are among those identified in the study.

He moved his family into a squatter settlement near Suva City some three years ago when his farm lease near Labasa town in northern Fiji had expired.

Unlike some of his neighbours, Shiu’s makeshift home of iron and timber does not have electricity or piped water.

Even if he was able to afford to pay for his water, it would not matter much as the settlement faces water cuts on a daily basis—brought about by an old network of water mains unable to cope with the explosive growth in and around the capital in recent years.

For the needs of his family, Shiu had dug a well not far from the main door of the house.

Mohanty had said a recent survey had revealed that some of the “squatters” like Shiu lived on income less than F$2 or even F$1 per day.

The day I called on him, Shiu was home alone. He goes around looking for odd carpentry jobs but not today. He said he has been having headaches lately and his wife too was not feeling well and had gone to the nearby health clinic.

Shiu had tried but given up on doing small-scale farming around his home. Cows from his neighbours constantly eat up whatever he has managed to grow, he said.

In his February 2006 study, Storey of Massey University, warned of chaos if Fiji does not prepare for displaced farmers like Shiu.

“With an estimated 13,140 farm leases due to expire between 1999 and 2028, Fiji may only be at the edge of a significant and potentially chaotic urban demographic explosion for which it is barely prepared.

“Funding is totally inadequate vis-à-vis need, with only F$1 million allocated for squatter upgrading for the year 2004.

“In contrast, the Minister for Housing estimates that F$50 million allocated over the next 10 years will be necessary to keep pace with demand.”

For solutions to Fiji’s swelling squatter and shanty towns, Mohanty advocated an integrated approach.

“Strategies of  eviction, or upgrading and rehabilitation programme alone may not bring the desired results. Poverty is the root cause of squatting. Therefore, effective programmes towards alleviation of poverty are called for.

“An integrated planning and developmental policy and action programme towards poverty alleviation, provision of low cost and affordable housing for the poor, resolution of land tenure problems and, above all, a sustained economic growth and human development are pre-requisites for addressing the squatter question on a sustained basis.”

The USP’s Pacific Institute of Advanced Studies in Development and Governance has been doing some work in this area as well. Its approach is in involving squatter communities in “squatter settlement issues.” Reliance on aid agencies for solutions can have the effect of bypassing stakeholders, the Institute said, and consequently decreasing the stakeholders’ sense of ownership of the issues. Storey in his study raised the question of affordable housing.

“The Fiji Housing Authority’s houses are typically priced between F$12,000-F$15,000 with mortgages offered at 5-6% beyond the scope of majority of those living in informal settlements with family incomes of F$100 a week.

“Even NGOs struggle to make any serious impact on demand. As an example, the Housing Assistance and Relief Trust (HART) estimated that it built 60 new flats in Fiji in 2002. In effect these are little more than demonstration houses.”

With costs ruling out voluntary re-settlement and squatter communities densely populated, environmental stresses also build up, said Storey.

“An UNESCAP/POC study of informal settlements in Nasinu (Suva) showed that only 19% of households had their rubbish collected while 52% either burned or buried their rubbish.

“Of some concern is the 21% of households who reportedly threw their rubbish into a nearby river or dumped it on nearby land.

“The study consequently warned that environmental and health conditions in informal settlements were degraded and deteriorating with growing populations.”

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VANUATU: Urban population to double in under 2 decades

By 2006, only 24% of Vanuatu’s population are urbanised. But with an annual growth rate of 2.6% and an urban growth rate of 4.2%, Vanuatu’s urban population of 52,601 will double in 17 years.

Vanuatu... faces problems of informal settlements.

These were the projections of Dr Gerald Haberkorn, head of demography and population at the Noumea-based Secretariat of the Pacific Community. Both he and Donovan Storey, of New Zealand’s Massey University, identified the lack of acquiring land as the main driver of informal housing settlements around Port Vila.

“Vanuatu faces similar problems of informal settlements providing essentially the only affordable housing in Port Vila and Luganville for many ni-Vanuatu,” wrote Storey.

“With the demise of the expensive housing schemes of the National Housing Corporation (which only managed to build 49 houses in total) Vanuatu has no national scheme to provide affordable housing for low and middle-income families.

“With formal subdivisions also being out of reach for the vast majority of urban residents, this has meant the majority of housing development has taken place on customary land adjacent to the main towns where people can find employment and participate in urban life.

“While there is no reliable data on peri-urban and informal sector populations, they are clearly the fastest growing areas.

“Such places as Black Sands experienced a 47% growth in population from 1997-2000 alone.”

But there are some good news to report on this. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) particularly had been playing a leading role in the provision of affordable housing for settlers in “informal housing,” said Storey.

“Habitat for Humanity (HfH), in partnership with a microfinance organisation (VANWOODS), has constructed a small number of houses around Port Vila.

“HfH adopts a ‘sweat equity’ approach to housing where the homeowner uses their own labour in construction to keep costs down.

“Though constrained by the high costs of land, a number of housing examples have been established and there is considerable demand.

“One further contribution has been the showcasing of cheaper building materials, including interlocking blocks used in the Philippines and materials that people can construct using their own labour, for example building tiles.”

Vanuatu also provides a good example of why initiatives needed to be introduced to manage urban growth. Said Storey:

“The rapid spread of cities into agricultural hinterlands is also creating a wider urban footprint with resulting environmental impacts.

“One example of this is the impact of peri-urban areas on the Tagabe catchment area, which covers twenty-five square kilometres to the immediate north of Port Vila.

“It is now under significant pressure from rural runoff, industrial wastewater, and informal settlements, but authority for the river is divided between Efate, the Port Vila Municipal Council and a number of customary landowners.

“While a number of informal settlements have sprung up in the catchment area over the past decade, and previous urban management reports have indicated that it is a potential area for urban expansion, the catchment is a critical source of water for the city and also represents an important source of market gardens and food production in western Efate.

“Essentially, the catchment is under threat from a range of developments but solutions, if they are to be effective, require interaction between formal and customary institutions.

“Though there is movement to create this consensus, through the ADB-funded Tagabe Catchment Initiative, dealing with pollution and use of the catchment is a complex but necessarily inclusive and time consuming process.”

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KIRIBATI: South Tarawa sitting on a time-bomb

If climate change doesn’t inundate Kiribati’s many atolls and islets, then waste pollutants certainly will due to the extremely heavy population density and overcrowding.

Kiribati... population under constant threat of epidemics and diarrhoea’s common.

Donovan Storey’s ‘Urbanisation in the Pacific’ report listed seven key environmental issues for the northern Pacific state. These include:

• Groundwater depletion.
• Increased salinisation and pollution from sewerage and animal excreta (around one-third of South Tarawa’s population use beaches as toilets).
• Marine life and seawater contamination from human and solid waste.
• Over fishing of reefs and lagoons.
• Non-degradable waste disposal.
• Coastal erosion, beach mining and deforestation eliminating sources of food, medicine and habitat and increasing the vulnerability of coastlines.
• Breakdown of traditional subsistence. production, resulting in poor nutrition and health-related problems.

He explained: “South Tarawa remains particularly vulnerable to environmental degradation.

“The population of Tarawa is under constant threat of epidemics and diarrhoea remains common.

“An Asian Development Bank project to draw water from a fresh lens source in North Tarawa is now under threat through population growth expanding into these reserves.

“At present projects on developing stable sources of potable water and dealing with sewerage and sanitation are being driven by donors, but eventually government will be required to take greater responsibility for this infrastructure and provision.

“Some officials describe the environment around South Tarawa as like ‘sitting on a time-bomb’ in terms of living standards and the impact on the environment.

“South Tarawa may have a reticulated sewerage system. But this is not available to a growing number of informal settlements and therefore has not solved the problem of open defecation.

“Most sewage and solid waste continues to be disposed along the waterfront and green belts and water catchments have been replaced with housing.

“One recent survey has documented that residents in squatter settlements on South Tarawa were more likely to dump solid waste, use the beach as a toilet and use dirty water for drinking, as a result of being cut off from infrastructure and services.

“Water and sanitation facilities are only provided to those on public land (predominantly housing corporation homes) and ‘private’ households are required to pay for their own connections.

“The majority of these cannot or choose not to pay for this service and end up dependent on wells and rainwater and basic toilets or squatting on the beach.

“Given that almost all new housing stock in Tarawa is now informal and ‘illegal’, and treated as such by authorities, this is a cause for concern.

“Water quality is a significant problem, as is the de-foliation of the atolls to make way for housing.

“Lagoon pollution, in part exacerbated by the closing of the lagoon for causeways, is of increasing concern and threatens public health.

“The garbage collection system has only been partially successful.

“Much of the urban area is still plagued by garbage and the country still does not have legislation to deal with solid waste management or pollution of the lagoon.”