Don’t judge a book by its cover… the same applies to the homeless

A regular route, from where I live to the place where my office is situated, takes one through many spots where plenty of street dwellers, at night, can be found lying under flyovers, parks, bridges, roundabouts and footpaths. Seeing these people gives you the impression that they may take shelter where ever they please; be it under flyovers, in parks, in large water pipes, shop fronts or on pavements. But if one looks deep enough, it can be found out as to why these people live out in the open as street dwellers or homeless.
Many of them, mired in a vicious circle of poverty, political unrest, deprivation, social ostracism, unemployment and lack of basic facilities in their own villages, often turn to cities to test their fate in their quest for a better future. Over the past few years, a large number of them have been driven away by floods and other natural calamities that have rendered them homeless and helpless in their own native villages; while others are lured by the fascination of better facilities, lifestyle, job prospects and various other similar temptations. However, most of them eventually end up being homeless on the city pavements, in parks and other public places.
Regardless of what we assume about these city dwellers, there is very little that we know of their problems, hopes, abilities, likelihoods etc. Actually most of us never even spare them a second glace, because unfortunately we are under the false impression that these people have no right to be on the roads in the first place. Secondly, it is an embedded belief among a vast majority of that almost all of them are involved in anti-social activities like begging, drug use and flesh trade etc and this creates our apathy towards these people.
Seeing this anomaly, I randomly interviewed a few street dwellers in different parts of the city, and was shocked to find out that, save a few beggars, almost all of them turned out to be construction labourers, waste collectors, vegetable sellers, porters at wholesale markets or labourers who unload trucks at markets. 
As their stories unfolded, it transpired on me that Ayaz wanted a home and a job while others needed meals, personal hygiene items, money to pay their children’s fees or to finance the medical treatment of their dear ones being treated at different hospitals. Thirty-one-year-old Ayaz grew up in southern Punjab and received his rudimentary education there. Like many others, he did not take his education seriously and dropped out of school after failing five times in class 10th, and began working in a brick kiln making Rs 2,500 a month before he decided to come to Karachi to eke out a better living for himself and his family.
“I want to settle here [Karachi] with my wife and son,” said Ayaz, who is passionate about having a house of his own in the city.  “A home is a home, if I am fed up with the world around …I have a key in my hand …will open the door and not care about the entire world…. but if I am homeless I will have to bear people all around … and one day I will end up dead or behind bars. So I want to get a job.”
He said he earns his living as a construction labourer and lives with his companions at the construction site where they work. “When there is no work, I have to sleep under a flyover or on a pavement as a last resort.”
With crumbling economic climate in Karachi, jobs have been dwindling over the past two years or so, forcing increasingly large number of people like Ayaz to sleep on pavements, under flyovers and various other public spots. Ayaz himself confessed that he is beginning to witness an increase in the trend of more and more people sleeping on the roads.
“Sleeping on the pavement, we face many problems,” Ayaz said. “One day while I was sleeping on a pavement near Taj Complex a few young lads, either accidentally or intently, only God knows better, stumbled on me and then started beating me savagely, blaming that it was my fault.” He thinks they were probably high on drugs or something as they themselves did not know what they were going on about. “Thank goodness some people came to my rescue and calmed them down.”
 He rued the absence of night shelters saying, “We desperately need night shelter so that we can sleep safely. The government should provide night shelter for us.”
When asked about where he gets his food from when he has no money he said, “We rely on the food served to the needy people by Saylani Welfare Trust and various other NGOs and philanthropists.”
On what he does when he has no job, he said, “I spend my time visiting mosques, hotels, shrines and other places where I can use toilet facility during the daytime while at night I sleep in parks or sometimes on footpath or under a bridge where I think it would be safe.”
Like Ayaz, hundreds of homeless people live on the pavements and streets of Karachi and their number is alarmingly increasing. Though a few NGOs and philanthropists are providing food and health-related services for these homeless people, there is no comprehensive programme on the part of the government, be it city, provincial or federal, to address the needs of these street dwellers. 
Their problems can be alleviated just by looking at their world through a broader perspective so as to create a better understanding of their issues.