As per Census 2011, India’s urban poor population living in informal settlements is over 65 million that is roughly 17 per cent of the whole urban population. Whereas the broad urban population growth is at two to three per cent every year, growth within the range of individuals living in slums and informal urban settlements is way larger. It's conjointly well-known that a major range of them are excluded from totally different welfare schemes and basic services.
Their state of affairs is even a lot of vulnerable throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas the “privileged” urban population will afford to make sure physical distancing, hygiene, access to necessities and non-essentials, work from home, covered coated under social safety measures, the urban poor are troubled to survive and create ends meet. However, thought they're the victims, they're typically blamed for spreading the disease, and become targets of stigma, isolation and discrimination. Coming back to the high risks of the pandemic, we've well-known examples just like the comparatively huge outbreak in Dharavi, Mumbai, or the unfold of the disease within the slums of Delhi, Bhopal and elsewhere.
To help the country navigate the challenges of the pandemic, the central and state governments have issued numerous advisories, together with ones for the urban centers. Most of those are supported ideal eventualities of managing the crisis, while not considering the bottom realities of slums and informal settlements, and also the dearth of essential institutional arrangements to implement these.
For example, the consultants on the safe management of water and sanitation by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs suggests safe management of public and community rest room facilities in packed urban areas. Similarly, the health ministry’s consultative on slums and COVID-19 apparently has the target of checking transmission of the virus in slums. However, each these advisories don't offer any elaborate strategy for meeting important wants of the urban poor for availing services like water, sanitation, hygiene, food and supplies. They conjointly don’t define any strategy which will effectively defend the residents from the pandemic.
While the challenges for the urban poor are monumental, we tend to are highlight a number of the essential measures for the urban poor here — concerning access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services. Access to clean services has forever been difficult for urban poor. it's typically misunderstood that the poor communities get WASH services at no cost. The actual fact is that the urban poor usually find yourself paying higher charges for water and sanitation as compared to the middle-income communities, since they're addicted to an unregulated market to shop for water, or on “pay-per-use” community and public bogs. However, even these paid and unregulated services aren't meeting the requirements of the urban poor this point. Hence, there's no selection however to strengthen the general public services for water, sanitation and hygiene for the urban poor.
Most informal settlements trust tanker-based water within the absence of piped water. Throughout the internment, even tankers became either untouchable or intermittent, forcing individuals to steer long distances to fetch water. Additional to this is that the challenge of the inevitable chaos that happens once the tanker reaches slums, where people crowd round the tankers out of desperation.
These problems may be self-addressed by means of introducing special systems within the most required locations. As an example, by appointing nodal officers in slums and informal settlements for distinguishing and addressing challenges; making certain regular, roster-based services for areas dependent on tanker-based water system and strengthening the fleets of tankers together with non-public suppliers. Provision and installation of multiple storage tanks altogether slums, with three-four faucets connected to those is another doable answer, whereby every tank might serve a bunch of 10-12 families — permitting tankers to fill these tanks, and folks to take care of physical distance while collecting water from them. Where such measures aren't doable, it's necessary to spot, train and involve community volunteers to manage the gang, guarantee physical distancing and prioritize the foremost vulnerable individuals like pregnant ladies, persons with disabilities and also the old. These measures, not to mention making a helpline and grievance redress measures, will pave the means for continuity of water responsibly.
For sanitation, slum residents generally don't have non-public toilets and bathtub facilities and are dependent on shared or community-level facilities. As a community or a toilet facility seat in slums are employed by multiple users in a very single day, the danger of virus transmission is high, which needs adherence to a frequent medical care protocol. Whereas provision of mobile bogs will partly solve the difficulty by reducing the user load from community bogs, further measures like incorporation of daily cleanliness and medical care routine, in conjunction with adequate hand washing facilities and also the follow of physical distancing while waiting will result in safer sanitation. Within the areas wherever community or toilet facility complexes aren't adequate, temporary rest room facilities with adequate water and regular maintenance and desludging arrangements have to be compelled to be prioritized.
In order to make sure access and continued usage of those facilities by urban poor, it's necessary to waive off user fee for water and community bogs, a minimum of till things stabilizes. So as to make sure hygiene, it's necessary to distribute hygiene kits comprising soaps and discharge hygiene product to slum households. Innovative styles of make-shift hand-washing stations and bogs ought to even be promoted and deployed to fulfill user needs. Further resources for such measures may be found from schemes like AMRUT, funds for disaster management or different state specific funds. There's a desire to attend to workers’ safety moreover — as an example, by making certain the availability and use of non-public protecting instrumentality for every class of staff, like those concerned in water, community and public bogs maintenance and sanitation staff. It's necessary to possess insurance and optional compensation for all water, sanitation and hygiene staff on duty, no matter their nature of engagement.
Experience so far shows that while the lockdown might have slowed down the pandemic spread, it has adversely impacted the lives of the poor. Also, while the nation-wide lockdown might be relaxed to some extent in the days to come, the restrictions that would continue will impact the urban poor much more than anyone else. This is where the government needs to come with a quick but well-planned response mechanism.
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