Lusaka — It is our collective duty to give millions of Zambians an essential piece of dignity in their lives - the dignity that comes from having a solid roof over one's head, running water and other services in an established community.

It is unacceptable, as Finance Building Society acting chief executive officer Abha Chaturvedi has correctly observed, for over 50 per cent of Zambians in urban areas to be without shelter.

And what is even more unacceptable is that practically nothing seems to be done in terms of availing these people with shelter - such an important basic need.

For the majority of our country's poor, decent shelter remains a luxury. Currently a great majority of our people are either homeless or live in very poor housing characterised by overcrowding and lack of adequate accompanying infrastructure services. This has a negative impact on their health and productivity.

In most cases these poor people lack secure land tenure and hence are vulnerable to eviction wherever they attempt to settle. And it seems our government, facing severe resource constraints, has long given up on providing our people with shelter.

But our country's urban problems do not only revolve around insufficient resources and services. They also include severe social dislocations, high levels of crime and insecurity and a corrupt and inefficient local government system.

And the high rate of rural-to-urban migration is not helping matters. This is also being compounded by the severe decay of our urban infrastructure. Most of our urban towns are simply unprepared to accommodate additional population, and this is leading to a further mushrooming of squatter settlements of high densities and inadequate or no services. And when one looks at some of these settlements, it is frightening to see how people live. The sanitation is extremely poor. In the heart of Lusaka, we have so many settlements with pit latrines and next to them open water wells. During the rainy season like now, these pit latrines flood and the waste is washed into the wells. How can disease like cholera, dysentery, bilharzia and other water-borne diseases be avoided under these conditions?

As long as these conditions continue to exist, cholera and other such diseases will continue to be with us and more lives will be lost every year.

The problem of housing will not go away on its own. The government has a duty to ensure that every citizen has a roof over their heads. It is the duty of government to address this problem. The private sector or market forces will not solve this problem without the government taking a leading role and providing a formula.

If the government cannot directly address this problem, then it must be able to mobilise sufficient amounts of private capital. But to be able to do this, the government must first recognise the problem of inadequate housing and place it high among its priorities. But as things stand today, housing does not seem to be a priority of our government and our politicians in general. Why? This is simply because our politicians do not have a housing problem themselves. They all have properties and live well; they have access to mortgages and other loans. They even have more access to land. So this problem is really for the poor. Most of our politicians benefited from government houses and land - the poor didn't. And this is a country were those in politics are primarily there to advance their own interests, to solve their own problems and not those of the people, especially the poor.

We have a strange type of democracy in this country, a type of democracy, which puts the interest of the minority above those of the majority who happen to be poor.

Here we are not saying the government should find money, build houses and dish them out for nothing. Yes, the government has a duty to provide housing to our people and our people are entitled to such services. But we cannot build an economy or a society purely on the basis of entitlements. People have to make a contribution. They have to have a sense of ownership which they don't get from being given blocks of rented accommodation which they don't own, don't have a stake in and haven't helped to design and build. But it is the duty of government to organise our people and help them help themselves. We can't continue to watch our people living in conditions that are worse than those of animals - some animals in this country live in stables that are far much better than human dwellings. This is not an attack or a criticism of those people who are kind to their animals - they have every right to be kind to their animals or pets. What we are trying to say is that if some of our people can be so generous to animals why can't we as a collective, as a nation be sensitive to the inhuman conditions under which a great number of our people live. Why are we not moved with indignation by the undignified conditions under which our fellow citizens, our brothers and sisters live?

We fully appreciate that this is not a small or simple problem. It is a gigantic and complex problem to which there are no easy or simple solutions. But we cannot throw our hands in the air and proclaim that there is nothing we can do, the problem is beyond us. This type of resignation amounts to a renunciation of all hope in us - it actually amounts to losing hope in life itself. We have to confront this problem and find solutions to it.

As we have already pointed out, it is our collective task as a nation to give each and everyone of our people an essential piece of dignity in their lives - the dignity that comes from having a solid roof over one's head, running water and other services in an established community. We cannot continue to have our people in the 21st Century living like those of the Stone Age, the primitive era. Modern man cannot live like that - he needs proper shelter and other services accompanying such infrastructure.