Life in the Slums of Manila
About one billion people live in slums and the highest concentration of them can be found in Asia. As part of our Urban Planet series we travelled to the Philippines where about 20 million people live in slums. One tenth of slum dwellers live in the capital Manila, in neighbourhoods like this one in the Tondo District.
Tondo is one of the oldest areas of Manila, and dates back about 1,000 years. But the past has been erased by the present. Today it's one of the most densely populated places on earth. There are 80,000 people per square kilometre. The United Nations says many of them lack adequate water, housing, sanitation, education, health and employment.
Chairman Tom was born and brought up in Tondo, and runs a community of about 4,000 slum dwellers there. He has six children, and according to Tom "everyday is a struggle".
He sells water for a living and he also makes US$40 a month from renting out property that he built on government land. "What I did is illegal," says Chairman Tom. "But I have to help my people because 90% of them are much worse off than me".
Estella and her husband Cricencio are an elderly couple who moved to Tondo slum from the countryside 20 years ago. They have seven children and they live at the end of an alleyway.
"I have spent many sleepless nights worrying about the threat of fires," says Estella.
Her husband Cricencio has another major worry. "The land that we live on is owned privately. We have no contract, no rights, nothing," he laments.
The river which runs through Tondo is a great source of entertainment for the many young people who live in the slum. Children spend hours swimming in it, but parts of it are choked with garbage. Some of the slum dwellers, like Estella, admit that they throw throw excrement in, because they have no toilet. The river is so polluted that the United Nations says it poses a serious risk to health.
The government has admitted that the population is growing at an alarming rate and the United Nations says the Philippines has one of the highest rates of population growth in the region. The average family size is six.
Words and pictures by Emma Joseph