As the world responds to the COVID-19 pandemic and works towards recovery, Sri Lanka should explore ways of halting the spread of future pandemics, stimulating recovery and building resilience in underprivileged urban settings a research/blog done by Chathurga Karunanayake of Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) reveals.
Urbanisation has intensified many of the most pressing global challenges over the last few decades. Today, responding to the COVID-19 pandemic has become top priority for the vast majority of towns and cities across the world, which account for over 95% of total reported COVID-19 cases according to the UN-Habitat COVID-19 Response Plan.
Research also shows that densely populated areas and underserved settlements without access to basic infrastructure facilities, those in strategic locations with high land value, those on reservations required for new infrastructure and those on the periphery with adequate housing requiring only improvement of infrastructure continue to provide a ready channel for the resurgence of pandemics.
Sri Lanka is no exception to these realities. Densely populated and underserved areas, including slums and shanties, have seen the incidence of a high number of COVID-19 positive cases during the past few months. Despite lack of exposure to similar pandemics in the past, Sri Lanka was exemplary in curtailing the first wave of the COVID-19 crisis.
Early measures adopted by the country, such as self-isolation, contact tracing, referring suspected cases to quarantine centres, curfews, lockdowns, and closure of schools and workplaces made this possible.
However, the numbers could have been further controlled had there been proper urban planning procedures. The outbreak in Bandaranayake Mawatha, Colombo is an excellent example of how diseases spread in underserved settlements in urban areas.
The cluster consisted of small living spaces, home to around 62 families on a 20 perch land. According to the 2016 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES), urban areas are home to a majority of families living in shanties and slums.
According to UN-Habitat III, in Colombo, an estimated 68,812 households are located in 1,499 underserved settlements accounting for more than half of the city’s population; about 74% of these scattered and small settlements have less than 50 housing units.
Furthermore, a majority of slum dwellers in urban areas are employed in self-managed, low wage jobs in the informal sector, earning daily wages.
In the recent past, successive governments have undertaken many initiatives to improve the conditions of slums, shanties, and other underserved settlements in urban areas. After the war, the Urban Development Authority (UDA) embarked on a project to rehouse underserved settlements as part of the Colombo City Beautification project.
Building resilience and ensuring preparedness is a worthwhile investment compared to costs that have to be incurred when managing an emergency unprepared.
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