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| Afghanistan | |
| Afghanistan Faced with Severe Housing Shortage | |
| 2007-10-20 | |
Bismillah lives with his handicapped father, mother and four sisters in a mud-and-wood house in a cramped settlement clinging to a shale-brown hill overlooking Kabul. With no direct water supply, dwellers of these rudimentary housing settlements -- all illegally built -- must lug their water from the bottom of the hill. "Life is hard," says, Suraiya begum, Bismillah's mother, her face hidden behind the lavender fabric of her burqa. "We wouldn't live here if we had a better choice." Six years after the invasion, ask ordinary Afghans the biggest challenge they face, and their answer isn't likely to be the Taliban. It is, in fact, to find a roof over their heads. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #3 There are few real problems, only opportunities. In this case, two problems with one solution. High unemployment and a housing shortage. The edge? Wages are very low. Using inexpensive available materials, design a standard house, and then hire every available person to start building them, for pennies a day. Every part of the process, from digging up dirt to clearing land, to building the houses is ordered, with workman being paid every day. You don't add infrastructure, but you plan for it to be added later. Back in the 1980s, some ingenious individual invented a device that runs off a diesel truck air pressure system. You put mud and straw in it and it compresses it quickly to produce a high quality mud brick. Add one drop of an inexpensive sealant to the mud and the brick is near waterproof. The bricks dry in a day instead of several. One tank of diesel can make enough bricks to make 3 houses. The average unskilled wage is $100/month. For $1B you could hire over 800,000 workers for a year. Imagine how much construction that many men could perform. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-10-20 19:22 |
| #2 I fail to see the hardship here, growing up I drew water from a well whenever we wanted some, we had no running water (Electricity was very expensive back then, it's much cheaper now) |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2007-10-20 15:14 |
| #1 With no direct water supply, dwellers of these rudimentary housing settlements -- all illegally built -- must lug their water from the bottom of the hill. Why, why it sounds just like Mexico City. Gee, Senor Fox, maybe you should clean up your own mess before calling the gringo racists. You and your ruling elite could do with some of that graft to help your own people rather than export them to the US. At least Afghanistan has an excuse, they've been at war for decades. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2007-10-20 10:12 |