Orangi Town - History

History

The population began to grow from 1965 onwards as a residential extension to the Sindh Industrial and Trading Estate (SITE). Orangi became famous in the 1980s when local inhabitants became frustrated at the lack of development in the area by the municipal administration and launched the Orangi Pilot Project under the guidance of Akhtar Hameed Khan. The Orangi area was the largest squatter settlement in Karachi at the time, so the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) did not extend services to the Orangi community. The first action of the project was to demand that the KMC should install a sewerage system free of charge but this was refused because KMC did not recognise Orangi. The population mostly comprises blue-collar worker (factory workers) including a substantial Rohingya Muslim refugee community mainly from Burma.

The local community financed, designed and built their own low-cost sewerage system. The Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) refused to allow the sewer system to be connected to the existing city sewers because of Orangi's unauthorised status. However, KMC was forced to cooperate when the project attracted worldwide attention and similar projects were set up in three squatter settlements in the city of Sukkur in northern Sindh.

The federal government introduced local government reforms in the year 2000, which eliminated the previous third-tier of government (administrative divisions) and raised the fourth tier (districts) to become the new third tier. The effect in Karachi was the dissolution of the former Karachi Division and the merger of its five districts to form a new Karachi City-District with eighteen autonomous constituent towns including Orangi Town; a move which helped to better administer the area.