HYDERABAD: A survey done on the living conditions of internal migrants by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has revealed a dark side of Hyderabad that challenges the “hi-tech” image of the city.
Internal migrants are those who move within the national boundaries from one state to another in search of livelihood. It was found in the study that most of these migrants live in squatter huts having just one room, use wood or dung as cooking fuel and defecate in the open. Some of them do not even have electricity connection and for the majority, tap is the only source of drinking water. They are also politically excluded and have no access to ration shops.
The survey was conducted across 13 cities in India. In Hyderabad, it was conducted among 4,500 internal migrants, who migrated to the city in the last ten years. The survey casts a serious doubt over Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation’s (GHMC) claim of Hyderabad being open defecation free. As per the survey, 71.3 per cent of the surveyed migrant population defecates in the open, second highest among 13 cities.
Moreover, it also revealed that a shocking 93.3 per cent of them live in non-notified slums, highest among 13 surveyed cities and 4.9 per cent live in dwellings at construction sites.
Only a meager 6.8 per cent of the migrants live in pucca houses compared to 70 per cent in Visakhapatnam or 59 per cent in Mumbai.
93 per cent of them live in either squatter huts, kutcha houses and semi-pucca houses and 95 per cent of the households have just one room, second highest in country after Delhi. 19 per cent of these households do not even have electricity connection. It is unlikely that most of these households would have attached toilet or sewage connection.
Only 13.3 per cent of the surveyed migrants said that they use cooking gas as fuel. A whopping 70 per cent still use either fuel wood, coal or dung to cook their food every day, making themselves vulnerable to respiratory diseases. Only 18 per cent of them get piped drinking water and the rest are dependent on public taps, hand-pumps or water tankers for drinking water. The worst part is that these migrants have no access to low-cost essential supplies sold by ration shops.
