Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund
(PPAF), in collaboration with HANDS and Shell Pakistan, held a ceremony
commemorating five years of integrated development initiatives in Goth Noor
Mohammad, a settlement 25 kilometres from Karachi where the Karachi
Metropolitan Corporation dumps 25 % of the city’s trash.
The chief guest on the occasion was
Jeannette Seppen, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Five years ago,
Goth Noor Mohammad was a settlement that lacked basic amenities such as running
water, sanitation, school or a basic health facility. Its residents used to
earn primarily through selling scrap collected from the garbage dump in the
vicinity, which is the destination of about a quarter of Karachi’s waste. In
2010, PPAF and its implementing partner HANDS along with Shell Pakistan began
working in Goth Noor Mohammad to help residents transform their lives for the
better. As many as 133 housing and 34 sanitation units were constructed with
the village divided into 51 clusters of two to three housing units while each
cluster having a common kitchen, toilet and a water storage tank. Electricity
and clean drinking water remained a major problem of residents so PPAF has
recently installed solar lights in each housing compound while Shell Pakistan
has installed a reverse osmosis plant in the settlement for clean drinking
water.
Over the past five years, PPAF has
spent Rs 27 million on housing, infrastructure, solar lighting, health and
education facilities while Shell Pakistan has contributed additional Rs 14.3
million for housing and provision of clean drinking water. Residents in the
area have also been facilitated in learning entrepreneurship skills through the
Shell Tameer Program enabling them to capitalize on related business
opportunities like recycling. With proper housing, drainage, access to clean
drinking water, solar lighting, medical care and education, now Goth Noor Mohammad
is very different from what it used to be. Qazi Azmat Isa, CEO PPAF, said,
“Pakistan is going through very challenging times but hope continues to exist.
It is only when people from different walks of life come together for the
common good that magic happens”
Source: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/sindh/30-Sep-2015/model-village-built-at-cost-of-rs-27m
