Machar Colony ( ur, ) (Bengali: মাছাব় কলোনি) or Machiara Colony ( ur, ) (Bengali: মাছিয়াব়া কলোনি) is an unplanned settlement in

Karachi Karachi (; ur, ; ; ) is the most populous city in Pakistan and 12th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former c ...

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

, located near the

Port of Karachi The Port of Karachi ( ur, , ''Bandar gāh Karāchī'') is one of South Asia's largest and busiest deep-water seaports, handling about 60% of the nation's cargo (25 million tons per annum) located in Karachi, Pakistan. It is located on the Kar ...

and Lyari. The settlement is spread over an area of almost 4 square kilometers, and is home to about 700,000 people. It is considered to be one of the most dilapidated slums in Karachi. Most people in the neighborhood are involved in the

fishing industry The fishing industry includes any industry or activity concerned with taking, culturing, processing, preserving, storing, transporting, marketing or selling fish or fish products. It is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization as including ...

and consequently the area is also known as ''Fisherman's Colony,'' with the word Machar derived from the Sindhi word for fisherman ''machera''. Residents of Machar Colony are employed by the fishing industry as shrimp peelers, fishermen, fish cleaners, or labourers in the ship breaking industry. Some of their homes are built on stilts over the water. The few flourishing businessmen that the colony has produced are in the fishing business, which is almost exclusively dominated by the Bengalis. A large majority of residents are

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

, although there are minorities of Afghans, Kutchis,

Pashtuns Pashtuns (, , ; ps, پښتانه, ), also known as Pakhtuns or Pathans, are an Iranian ethnic group who are native to the geographic region of Pashtunistan in the present-day countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were historically r ...

, Punjabis,

Rohingya The Rohingya people () are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnic group who predominantly follow Islam and reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar (previously known as Burma). Before the Rohingya genocide in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an ...

, and

Sindhis Sindhis ( sd, سنڌي Perso-Arabic: सिन्धी Devanagari; ) are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group who speak the Sindhi language and are native to the province of Sindh in Pakistan. After the partition of British Indian empire in 1947, man ...

References

External links

Karachi Website

Kiamari Town

Machar Colony on Wikimapia
Neighbourhoods of Karachi Kiamari Town Bengali-speaking countries and territories {{Karachi-geo-stub

See also

References

External links