Slums are tips of the iceberg

There is no gainsaying that human settlement is the most critical problem facing urban centres in the Third World today.
The slums are a common feature in all towns and cities. Homelessness is another. Problems associated with slums are multiple. They are dens of criminals, who contribute immensely to insecurity in the centres.
The slums are major sources of environmental pollution, not to mention the fact that they are health hazards. They lack infrastructure, electricity, clean water, toilets, schools, health centres, among others.
But what is more worrying is that developing countries do not have enough resources and political will to solve the slum problems.
In fact, instead of finding solutions to the problems, some politicians encourage more people either to join existing slums or to start new ones so that they can vote for them during parliamentary and civic elections.
Although United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat) has had a series of meetings aimed at improving urban housing, especially the slums, nothing concrete has come out of them.
This is why we are still sceptical whether UN-Habitat’s new move called Cities’ Alliance Initiative will make any difference. The immediate objective of this new initiative is the upgrading of slums in poor countries. To begin with it has already pledged to start working on the Nairobi slums. But they are bound to face stiff resistance from vested interests in spite of the fact that President Moi has given them his blessing.
But even if the current Nairobi slums were to be upgraded, there is no guarantee that new ones will not come up. This is because any initiative that does not comprehensively address urban poverty is doomed to fail.
What is more, any initiative that does not deal with factors that lead to rural-urban migration will come to naught.
If the authorities in developing countries want to deal with urban population explosion, they must develop infrastructure in the country side, promote agriculture, build quality schools, establish proper social amenities, create employment in rural areas, institute a social welfare assistance programme to the unemployed people, among others.
In urban centres clear housing policy must be drawn and implemented. And Habitat must work with the governments on this; otherwise they will always just be addressing the symptoms rather than the causes of urban problems.
Nairobi, for example, has no clear housing policy. The private sector is left to develop houses as they wish.
This has resulted in over supply of houses for the upper middle class, and acute shortage of houses for middle and lower classes of people. Unscrupulous business people have therefore taken advantage of this to build high-rise houses that are not fit for human habitation.
Some have caved in with people inside, leaving a trail of destruction of property and loss of human life.