IN rural areas a house in most cases means a thatched hut built over ancestrally owned land without any supporting documents. Most of these houses are built either on empty public land or on the farm of a landlord where the family provides peasantry services against a paltry share of the harvest. These rickety structures are often made of straw, reeds, leaves, branches and trunks of trees. A better version is made of unbaked bricks covered with mud plaster. Such rickety structures are frequently battered by strong winds and seasonal heavy showers every year.
The Development Statistics of Sindh-2022 report issued by the Sindh Bureau of Statistics reveals that approximately 70 per cent of houses in rural areas are katcha. Housing data of five worst flood-hit districts in 2022 depicts abject poverty in these areas. Percentage of katcha houses in rural areas of some of the districts are: Dadu (56pc), Jamshoro (65pc), Qambar-Shahdadkot (65pc), Khairpur Mirs (51pc) and Mirpurkhas (71pc). Moreover, the report also reveals that 72pc of rural houses are just one-room structures. The recent census data of 2023 also confirms that 71.35pc of rural houses in Sindh are one-room structures. An astounding number of 268,371........