Qadir Gul, a laborer from the remote tribal region of Mohmand agency, looked out worriedly from under the shade of a bus stop close to the ninth avenue of the capital city. He saw hundreds of people, but no one approached him to ask for his services as a labourer. Gul had been sitting in the same place for two consecutive days, but his search for work remained fruitless. At night, he trudged back to his ‘home’, a stretch of road on the 9th Avenue near Peshawar Mor, which has become an abode for dozens of other homeless people like him. Gul was forced to come to Islamabad a few years ago to work as a laborer when clashes between militants and security forces in the Mohmand Agency became severe. He makes a meager two hundred rupees a day if hired, which pay for his meals but he still manages to save and sends some money home. Despite all the hardships Gul faces, he is among the few ‘privileged’ homeless people because he usually gets some work every two or three days.
The poor economic condition of the country and the rampant poverty which follows it has given urban rise to homelessness. In the federal capital, the endemic of homelessness is further fueled by the fact that the city is a magnet for people who seek small jobs from all over the country, and especially for the residents of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and nearby cities of Punjab like Chakwal, Jhelum, Attock and Talagang. The influx of migrants from these areas, usually comprising unskilled labour, has lead to a demand-supply imbalance in the city’s job market.
There are hundreds of homeless people in the capital city, including those living on the 9th Avenue and other roads and parks of Islamabad. Although Islamabad houses less homeless people than other major cities, the recent increase in their number is nevertheless alarming.
The problems of being homeless do not end at the discomfort and misery of having to live on roadsides and parks, but spiral into further complications. These include the problem of the homeless not being issued National Identity Cards (NIC), as well as the problem of homeless children who are used as child labour. Such children work at places like auto workshops where they are made to work fifteen hours a day for as little as a hundred rupees in wages.
The miseries the homeless face have a deep impact on their psyche, and many resort to drugs for escape. A twenty eight year old addict from Chakwal, Faisal Shah told “I came to Islamabad from my hometown to find the job of driver or cleaner as my two older brothers were killed by our cousins in a family dispute.” Soon however, Shah fell into the hands of a drug dealer who used him as a carrier between Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab and later deserted him to the mercy of the streets when he wasn’t needed any more. “I can’t go to sleep at night without heroin because my bitter memories haunt me,” he explained, adding that he spends his days drugged in different parks, trying to avoid the police.
Many others resort to begging, and some find it much more lucrative than working. A fifty year old beggar, Hamid Raza, talked about the circumstances which forced him to beg for a living, “I came to the capital city four years ago from Attock to find a job when there were none to be had in my native city. I have a wife and three daughters to support, and I came here wanting to become a salesman. I have visited every market Islamabad and Rawalpindi but every employer tells me I am too old to be a salesman. It is undignified to beg but at least it fills my stomach and leaves me some money to send back home.”
The down-and-outs of the capital
