Recovering from a Catastrophic Flood with Khalid Mehmood Shaikh, Chief Executive Officer for Sindh People's Housing for Flood Affectees (SPHF), Pakistan

[00:00:00] Piers Clark: Welcome to the Exec Exchange, a 15 minute podcast in which a leader from the water sector shares a story to inspire, inform, and educate other water center leaders from around the globe.
[00:00:11] Piers Clark: My name is Piers Clark, and today my guest is Khalid Shaikh, Chief Executive of the Sindh People’s Housing for Flood Affectees in Pakistan.
[00:00:21] Piers Clark: Khalid, it is wonderful to connect with you today.
[00:00:25] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: Thank you. I'm also here to talk to you about Pakistan and about what initiative, which we are going to take.
[00:00:31] Piers Clark: Brilliant. We always like to start by learning about our interviewee. Can you give me a bit of your background? What did you do before you were Chief Executive of the SPHF?
[00:00:41] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: I was working as secretary in the government of Sindh. I was Security, Implementation, and Coordination when flood hit major parts of Sindh in 2022.
[00:00:50] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: So I left that job and I came to work as CEO of the newly established companies, SPHF, which is  Sindh People’s Housing for Flood Affectees. And the purpose was to reconstruct 2.1 million houses for the people whose houses were damaged during that flood.
[00:01:06] Piers Clark: So you've been a public servant for many years working to serve the good people of Sindh. Now let's talk about where is Sindh in the world? Where is it within Pakistan, and how many people do you serve?
[00:01:20] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: Sindh is a province of Pakistan and its total population is about 60 million. Karachi is the capital of Sindh, and it is the biggest city in Pakistan.
[00:01:30] Piers Clark: And Karachi is the city that I suspect people listening to this will be able to go, "Oh, I know where Karachi is."
[00:01:35] Piers Clark: Now, let's talk about the flooding issues that you've experienced in Sindh. Give some of a sense of the history. What's the scale of the challenge that you're dealing with
[00:01:45] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: In the year 2022, catastrophic rains happen in Sindh. It was a catastrophic event, which we have not seen since ages.
[00:01:54] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: Around 2.1 million houses were damaged, and around 15 million people became homeless in one day, and they were on the roads. They had no shelter, they had no food, and they had no water today.
[00:02:07] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: So the government took up this challenge and started rescue operation and after two weeks time we started to think what to do. And the chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party, which is a big political party in Pakistan, Chairman  Bilawal Bhutto Zardari got the idea and he started talking about reconstructing 2.1 million houses for the poor people.
[00:02:28] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: Most of them were very, very poor. Around 31% people earn less than $1 a day, and around 69% earn less than $2 a day. So they were poor and ultra poor in all respects. They had no capacity and they live in mud houses. They did not have resilient houses.
[00:02:46] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: So the idea of the political government was to reconstruct houses so that they don't get these type of shocks every year, because rains happen every year and some part of their houses gets damaged.
[00:02:56] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: But it was so catastrophical that the mass scale damages of the houses occurred. So far, we have put 1.2 million houses under construction and around 600,000 houses have been completed every month. We are completing 50,000 to 60,000 houses.
[00:03:12] Piers Clark: That is an incredible statement you've just shared, and I deliberately didn't want to interrupt because you were giving such a glorious overview, but let me just claw about and pick out some of those key facts.
[00:03:23] Piers Clark: So in 2022, in one day, 15 million people, about 25% of the population in Sindh, lost their homes. They lost their water supply, they lost their sanitation, they lost everything. That exactly is what stimulated the government to undertake this incredible program of building homes. Of course, it's not just the homes 'cause you've got to build the infrastructure to support those homes. You've got to build the water and wastewater connections.
[00:03:53] Piers Clark: Now you've managed to get enough momentum going that you are now completing between 50 and 60,000 homes every month. Did I hear that right?
[00:04:04] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: Yes, exactly. This model is beneficial driven model. There's no contract it.
[00:04:09] Piers Clark: Can you share more on how have you mobilized to be able to complete 50,000 homes a month?
[00:04:15] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: We select the beneficiaries through a complete set of investigations. We get their bank accounts opened and we train them how to reconstruct their own houses. In this whole initiative, we have trained more than 20,000 people.
[00:04:29] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: So what happens is the beneficiary receives a phone call from bank that their first installment has arrived. Most of them, primarily women, then go to the bank often for the very first time. About 99% of these families had never entered a bank before, as they're so poor they never had a bank account.
[00:04:47] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: Inside the bank, they get their biometrics done and learn about the banking system. Then they receive their first installment of 75,000 rupees, which they use to purchase construction materials by themselves.
[00:05:00] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: Our NGOs, which we have hired to support them, their engineer and social mobilizer are there in each village. They train them how to reconstruct their house, and they do the construction of the foundation first. Then we send second installment after verifications through an online verification system, and then they get the second installments, so it's performance based installments.
[00:05:23] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: Once these four installments are done, they get their beautiful house done.
[00:05:28] Piers Clark: It is incredible. Khalid, you mobilized an army of people who were motivated to build their own homes, and actually the bit you did was provide them with the financing, provide them with the NGOs if you've given them support and the training to be able to do it.
[00:05:42] Piers Clark: You also commented that most of the people applying were women. Did I catch that correctly?
[00:05:49] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: Yes, exactly. Our idea is to empower women. We are doing around 2.1 million houses and 50% of these people live on the state land. They're scattered over 30 to 35,000 villages.
[00:06:01] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: So what is new, which we are doing right away, is that we are giving land title to women only. And that is another sort of empowerment because women first learned how to open their bank accounts. Now they are owner of their own house, and this is very fantastic to see that women are getting empowered through different mechanisms.
[00:06:20] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: What we have done, Piers, is that in every village we have formed a village reconstruction committee, which is constituted by 50% female and 50% male. So they make the decisions about their villages, and they are our target contacts and they help each other.
[00:06:35] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: There are so many good stories about the community environment that they make. The houses of the people who are not able to construct their own houses. For example, there was a pair where one was physically impaired and the lady was blind, so the community constructed their house.
[00:06:51] Piers Clark: It warms your heart just to hear it, doesn't it? It's wonderful. Now, tell me about the sanitation and water supply. I assume these houses are not connected to any water pipes, so people are still gathering their water from local wells and streams, and the sanitation is with septic tanks or drop toilets.
[00:07:11] Piers Clark: Is that correct?
[00:07:13] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: Even before the flood, the biggest challenge is that the use of open defecation is quite high. So again, the Chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party whose government is also ruling Sindh, had the vision that first we had to reconstruct houses, and now his focus is to provide WASH facilities for all these 15 million people.
[00:07:34] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: So I think it's going to be another $3 million project.
[00:07:38] Piers Clark: Just to be clear, for our audience who aren't familiar, when Khalid refers to WASH facilities, he's meaning water and sanitation and hygiene facilities, WASH, in that context to address the open defecation challenge.
[00:07:52] Piers Clark: And I think what you said is absolutely right. The first step needs to be giving people shelter over their heads. Then you can build upon that by providing the sanitation services, which will help address the open defecation practices that have been prevalent previously.
[00:08:09] Piers Clark: You also mentioned a budget. Can you tell me more about how much do you think addressing the open defecation and the wash facilities would cost?
[00:08:19] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: For housing, we needed $2 billion and we got the financing from the World Bank, from the Asian Development Bank, from the Islamic Development Bank and from the European Investment Bank, and also we got emissions from UNIDO and other UN agencies. Our other target is around 2.5 to $3 billion for WASH.
[00:08:37] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: The world is quite cooperative. The World bank has shown their willingness. We have gathered some $200 million already. Another $400 million from the Asian Development Bank program. So we expect that $1 billion target will be completed in this year, and in subsequent years we will be able to get $2 billion.
[00:08:58] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: We have decided as a policy in government of Sindh that no untreated water will go to any flowing body and every treatment shall be done so that the hygiene is there. This is a grand project and like housing, we are quite confident. We will do it in next 3 to 4 years time.
[00:09:15] Piers Clark: If I was sitting inside one of those IFIs, International Finance Institutions, the World Bank, the Islamic Bank, I'd be looking at you and going, you've proven you can do this. You've proven you can mobilize the resources and get the capital to work, delivering real value to significant populations of really underserved people.
[00:09:35] Piers Clark: It's incredible what you have achieved, Khalid. I'm in awe of how you've been able to mobilize the political will and convert that political will into real action on the ground that is transforming millions of people's lives.
[00:09:51] Piers Clark: Now I would like to finish with just the question of if you could go back 20 years, what advice would you give a young Khalid bearing in mind all the things you now know?
[00:10:03] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: I have four things in mind because I had 30 years of experience working with the public sector.
[00:10:08] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: Number one, whether you are in private sector or public sector of think big because if you don't think big, you won't be able to do big things.
[00:10:16] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: Then gather all the best resource. I always work with the best consultants in the world, so the chances of engineers is not there. Select your team best on merit. Get the best person for the job and have clear vision.
[00:10:31] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: Whatever you dream, have a clear vision how to fulfill that dream. And now we are very confident that whatever way we will do this job of Wash in the next three years time, we will get the funding.
[00:10:43] Khalid Mehmood Shaikh: Last thing, how did we get this funding possible? We hired four auditors in our project. Never ever in the private sector or even public sector four big audit firms are at a time in one project, but I brought them in this project to ensure transparency and accountability.
[00:11:00] Piers Clark: Wonderful. Think big, work with the best, have a clear vision. Don't let people work in tribes, bring together competitors to deliver the vision.
[00:11:10] Piers Clark: You have been listening to the Exec Exchange with me, Piers Clark, and my guest today has been Khalid Shaikh, the Chief Executive of the Sindh People’s Housing for Flood Affectees, the SPHF in Pakistan.
[00:11:24] Piers Clark: I hope you can join me next time. Thank you.