Prof. Anna Tibaijuka

United Nation’s Habitat executive-director Prof. Anna Tibaijuka has cautioned over inadequate housing, especially for the poor, describing it as “a silent menace”, a bomb shell waiting to explode any time.

Speaking to experts and actors on housing and human settlements at the World Debate Forum in London yesterday, Prof Tibaijuka blamed the problem on failure of housing policies in nations around the world.

She also expressed grave concern over escalating poverty in poor countries, especially those located south of the Sahara desert, which she said contributed a

great deal to lack of decent housing among the poor majority.

“The world is currently busy addressing other issues, but most world leaders tend to forget that lack of affordable housing facilities for the poor majority is a dangerous bomb shell threatening lives of millions of people around the world,” said Prof Tibaijuka.

She said the world has witnessed myriad of successes of housing and human settlement provisions in Mexico, Brazil and Nicaragua, but even there over fifty per cent of the people in need didn’t afford decent housing.

Prof. Tibaijuka, a Tanzanian native whose country also has big slums, said the world should work out a new housing development paradigm that would help institutions carter for all sections of people.

“We need institutions to work towards providing housing facilities for all the people,” she insisted, citing mortgage financing as one of the essential tools that would help, but only if the system is redesigned to provide affordable housing.

“We have so many cases of housing facilities built under mortgage financing, but they are vacant because they are not affordable,” said Prof. Tibaijuka.

Tabling his ministry’s 2009/10 budget estimates, Lands and Human Development minister, John Chiligati observed that 75 percent of Urban-based houses have been built in an unplanned areas.

In Dar es Salaam, Jangwani, Manzese, Buguruni, Tandika, Kimara, Mbezi Chini, Mbagala, Temeke and Kigamboni were some of the areas with mushrooming of unplanned settlements.

A recent report by the UN-Habitat titled State of the World’s Cities Report warns against the rising number of slums worldwide including Tanzania saying that the same makes life a misery to the dwellers.

”Almost one third of the world’s urban population lives in slums, without access to decent housing or basic services, and in the neighbourhoods where diseases, illiteracy and crime are rampant,” Prof. Tibaijuka says in the report.

According to UN-Habitat, shelter conditions have a direct impact on human development, including child mortality, education and employment.

The report which was recently inaugurated during World Urban Forum in Vancouver, Canada, also notes in part that poor conditions in slums also exposes women and children to a variety of health hazards, forcing them to engage in risky sexual behaviour.

For instance, it reveals that children in slums are more prone to waterborne diseases and respiratory infections than those in rural areas and those women in slums are more likely to contract HIV/Aids than their counterparts in rural areas.

However, the report says that despite all the perils associated with the rising number of slums, many governments are yet to take appropriate measures to curb the trend putting more lives to the risks.