In Fiji, the squatter settlement growth started long before in the 1960s due to many reasons such as the reserve of land leases, employment opportunities in urban locations, joining families, education and small-scale businesses. According to UNHabitat, 2017, It is estimated that 1 billion people live in informal settlements across the globe, most of them located in the countries in the global south. It is projected that informal settlement dwellers will increase to 2 billion by 2030 and 3 billion by 2050, especially if the current trends persist, with poor sanitation in those communities contributing to stress, disease outbreaks, violence, and increased problems of drug use and other social issues, thereby presenting significant risks to the health of the squatter dwellers and others.
These predicaments were worse when there were either no healthcare facilities or only poor healthcare facilities in the shanty town community. Much research has indicated pointing out the negative connotations of informal or squatter settlements by giving different downtrodden recognition such as; slums, squats, shantytowns, unplanned, and clandestine and spontaneous settlements (Zhu et al.2011 & UN-Habitat 2017). Increased urbanisation has been a significant worry for many governments and city administrators due to many reasons. The abject poverty status of the population of informal settlements could be attributed to the fact that most informal dwellers are rural-urban migrants who work for the minimum or below minimum labour wages in various informal sector enterprises and hence are unable to raise enough income for their subsistence. On the other hand, the labour from such areas has been proven to be assets, despite being uneducated, yet they are useful resources to do many odd jobs in public and private sectors. Many females were engaged in any type of work in factories, shops and as caregivers or housemaids. To have informal housing status is to exist in “a state of deregulation, one where the ownership, use, and purpose of land cannot be fixed and mapped according to any prescribed set of regulations or the law”. While there is no global unified law of property ownership, the informal occupant or community will typically lack security of tenure and, with this, ready or reliable access to civic amenities (potable water, electricity, and telephone services, road creation and maintenance, emergency services, sanitation, and waste collection). Due to the ephemeral nature of occupancy, they do not pay rentals, while some landowners have other arrangements to help support them. After settling down, they remove the trees and forest covers for firewood and deplete resources such as fisheries by illegal means and ways. The landscapes have been altered to make houses by excavation and alter the course of drainage problems and erosion of soil to allow landslides to alter the geomorphology of the area. Substandard building structures are prone to damage due to hurricanes and high-speed winds and are also a threat to other hazards such as flooding. Many other areas of concern have been directed towards social and health and basic sanitation issues. Most disputes are referred to health authorities regarding solid waste disposal and smoke by burning refuse. Other areas of complaints have been attributed to government agencies such as the Welfare, Police, and Lands & Mineral Resources Department.
Locations and landscapes
Kevin Barr, a long-term activist, and researcher of urban poverty in Fiji, has highlighted many squatter settlements exist with the consent of Indigenous landowning units and make prearranged contributions according to ‘vakavanua arrangements’, even though such relationships often lack legal recognition. Many others settled on Crown Reserves or marginal land, Native Land (ILTB), and freehold, others include reserve areas along the river bank, and coastal areas (hinterland). There are settlements in some unusual settings such as in hilly areas, amid flood-prone river banks, mangrove swamps, and close to wetlands. Fiji’s Development Plan 8 stated that a squatter is “a resident of a dwelling which is illegal according to planning by-laws regardless of whether the landowner has given consent. A 2003 UN Habitat, report found the ethnicity of squatters was roughly half-indigenous Fijian and half-Indo-Fijian. The cause of such settlements started when agricultural leases were not renewed from 1960s, and some in the 1990s onwards, the displaced former farmers and families whom the government attempted to relocate surfaced with inundating problems had no choices but to seek shelter elsewhere. Another crisis was caused by the decline of the garment industry in the 2000s; many started squatting in Lautoka and Suva and other urban centres, often living in areas with environmental dangers (Mohanty,2006 & Thornton, 2009). All these humanitarian and social burdens of communities had a lot of impacts on the shoulders of the governments, municipal councils, and other regulatory authorities. Needless to mention the service providers such as interalia; water, electricity, telephone, and infrastructure networks could do nothing. The Fiji Times of October 28, 2023, reported that 15 per cent of Fiji’s urban population live in 200 squatter settlements around the country because they cannot afford to buy a house. The Government wants these informal settlements eradicated over the next 10 years through the provision of affordable homes. This was revealed by Minister of Finance Professor Biman Prasad when launching the Fiji Government’s Request for Tender (RFT) for its first affordable housing public-private partnership (PPP) project to assist in bringing in the private sector and reduce squatter and informal settlements. The National Housing Policy identified 15 per cent of the urban population living in 200 informal settlements around the country and because of the unaffordability of the houses or the land that is available, moreover, informal settlements are springing up around the outskirts of major towns and cities. This may be a concern for stakeholders in the future. The central government and local governments are required to provide essential services to citizens and urban dwellers as part of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Moreover, in the early days of the 1970s, many squatter settlements were supported by the government as part of their concerns raised in the pocket meetings at the time of election campaigns. Few areas of essential services were provided, later scores of many others settled in the areas, but were denied services. So they had made illegal connections by sharing. Some landowners gave consent to allow the services to be provided to relieve them of many hardships faced. In 2018, the Fijian Government announced a program to improve housing in which squatters can become eligible for grants. There were an estimated 230 informal settlements, housing 20 per cent of the total population. Many settlements situated in highly vulnerable areas, prone to many disasters due to climate change, including sea level rise, hurricanes, and droughts. Hence there is a need to support these areas through other agencies. The Adaptation Fund supports a project aimed at increasing the resilience of informal urban settlements in Fiji. The project focused on informal settlements in four urban areas viz: Lautoka, Sigatoka, Nadi, and Lami, all located in the urban areas. Mangrove deforestation and coral reef extraction for urban development increase vulnerability to coastal hazards, as these natural features act as barriers against storm surges and cyclones.
Due to the constitutional rights of all living in such areas need to be supported in ways to help achieve their own goals, and their undeniable rights to infrastructure, public services, and local government support.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Under Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control”. According to Yabaki representing Citizen Constitution Forum stated that, “rights are not created in a vacuum and people’s rights, can only be guaranteed if everyone respects those rights and ensures that they contribute to those rights being upheld”, (Yabaki 2007). Under Fiji’s 2013 Constitution, Section 35 there are ‘rights’ highlighted such as “rights to housing and sanitation” as well as “environmental rights” under Section 40. Over the years all the governments have appraised many informal settlements in providing much support and ensuring land leases with other infrastructure were provided. Hence their status was upgraded from informal to a legalised settlement and be part of the town or a city boundary. They had the franchise to vote in the council elections. The buildings were regularised and leases up to 99 years were granted. The value of the property had increased tremendously and the property could be sold with high premium rates. Therefore, from the early days of sordid squalor settings, these areas have been transformed into priceless communities having mediocre statuses, despite having a small piece of land.
Location and opportunities
Being located outside of a town boundary has been a central part of the squatter experience itself. While regulatory and formal homilies about informal settlements emphasise their relative proximity to town and their peri-urban nature, distance is a central aspect of how settlers themselves define and experience their situation. The ephemerality of these spaces combines with the many physical, practical, and symbolic borders that set them apart and away from nearby towns, reinforcing that the settlements are potentially transient. It is fairly common for all urban and peri-urban dwellers in the present day. But without the balance of productive land and established systems of distribution of resources, informal settlers become doubly disadvantaged. Unlike the patterns in growing urbanised cities where industrialisation has absorbed great numbers of unskilled urban migrants, the relatively small, service-oriented economy of Fijian urban centres provides limited economic opportunities for new settlers. The recent downturn in the sugarcane industry has seen a collapse in classic seasonal employment opportunities in manual labour previously dominated by the landless urban poor, a crisis that deepened following the breakdown of the tourism industry during the global pandemic and the slow recovery of the service economy since. In many countries, the residents of this type of informal settlements are attracted by potential politicians to secure their entry into the Parliament and acquire esteemed positions. They are assured of many reforms and other opportunities for the areas to be made environment-friendly with other amenities such as a socially well-built environment.
Solutions and projects
Despite many agencies and governments having been providing many levels of support and input, however, there are still lots of areas to be looked into from various perspectives to improve the image of health and safety issues of similar communities throughout Fiji. Over the years funding for such projects included the government of Fiji, The People’s Community Network including the Housing and Relief Trust (HART), Rotahomes, Habitat for Humanity, Save the Children, and the HART. It was established in 1970 by the Fiji Council of Churches, and operates around 750 apartments for destitute families in Fiji; residents are bound by strict codes of behaviour and must not have criminal records (Chung & ECREA, 2007). Rotahomes is a project of the Rotary Club of Lautoka; since 1985 it has built (using teams of foreign volunteers) close to 800 houses for low-income and destitute families. This organisation is now building fully engineered community subdivisions – the first is Koroipita, a village close to Lautoka. In Suva, 162 families are part of the Lagilagi Pilot Project at Jittu Estate. Rotary project to construct homes in Fiji’s west to help resettle squatters is hoping for government funding to continue with stage two. The project has already built 70 homes on 82 lots at Naikabula, close to Lautoka, with a sewage system, roading, and a community center housing a kindergarten. PCN has a network of squatter settlements – particularly in the Suva-Nausori corridor – that aims to raise the collective voice of squatter settlers across Fiji and potentially marks the beginning of a process that may challenge the negative attitudes and stereotypes that pervade government perceptions of squatters. Ensure residents of informal settlements have secure rights to the land they inhabit as it expands microloans and supports low-cost housing. Funding is split between community contributions (many in the community have been saving collectively since 2003) and from external sources. PCN project entails whereby the families pay half the cost of the construction of their home, with the other half funded by a German Catholic funding group called Misereor and the government (Fiji Sun, 2009). The trend involving other non-government agencies in upgrading squatter areas inculcated initiatives from the civil society organisations and central governments that came together to form diverse directives that developed policy recommendations around housing and land, negotiating approvals of the recommendations and then monitoring their implementation.
Conclusion
Over more than six decades there have been many conventional changes in status-quo, esteem, and beliefs of the people, as compared to these days. It has been the influence and efforts of the government that had instigated such evidential and innovative development and the residents enjoy daily. Credit also goes to many other organisations in their areas of support. The stigma and other forms of the negative mindset that have been part of many have changed dramatically, as they have achieved a lot through their virtuous acts and perseverance. These days, many are well-educated, live in well-built houses, and enjoy the luxuries of life as many others. There is a potential hope to see others many settlements are still in the pipeline to benefit. The Fijian government is setting its target to the year 2030 formalise many squatter settlements in Fiji. Let us support the medium term vision of the government of the day.
- KESHWA NAND KRISHNA is a former Fiji National University lecturer. The views expressed in this article are his and does not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.
