KARACHI: After four decades of picking people up off Karachi’s footpaths, Akbar Ali Rana has made a request of the state: give him land.
Rana, who has been serving humanity in Karachi for 40 years, has appealed to the government and to philanthropists to provide land for Sahara Village shelter homes so that destitute individuals living on roads and footpaths can be accommodated.
Under Rana’s leadership, the Sahara Public Rights Welfare Organization and Sahara Village Welfare International operate seven welfare centres across Karachi, including old age homes, shelter homes and day care centres.
Around 600 destitute, elderly and mentally challenged individuals are currently being provided housing, food and care at these facilities — a caseload that would strain a well-funded public institution, let alone a charity dependent on donations.
Rana said rising rent, electricity bills, medicine costs and ration demand have made it increasingly difficult to keep operations running. His appeal is therefore specific rather than open-ended: land, he argued, would remove the single largest recurring cost — rent — and allow the organisation to redirect scarce donations toward food, medicine and care.
Land should be provided, he urged, so that better lives can be given to those living on the streets.
Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, has no comprehensive public shelter network for its street-dependent population, leaving abandoned elderly people and those with untreated mental illness largely in the hands of private welfare organisations. Groups such as Sahara Village have effectively become the city’s default social safety net — an arrangement that works only for as long as private funding holds.
In recognition of his four decades of selfless service, the City Press Club has awarded Rana the Khizmat-e-Insaniyat award.
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