Another major problem in the LEDC cities is the poor Infrastructure. As the population continues to grow, the existing infrastructure cannot cope. The families in the LEDC cities live in poverty with little or no money for food or clothes. The money that they do have for food is spent in the local fly ridden shops and is only spent on poor quality foods as that is all that these shops stock. The food that the people eat is not a balanced diet and many families suffer from malnutrition. The water is full of diseases such as dysentery, typhoid and diarrhoea. These diseases spread rapidly because of the overcrowding and are also fatal to many people, especially children, causing the high infant mortality rates and for example in Ceara, where infant mortality rate are nearly 3 times higher than those in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city. Sewerage also pollutes the water as human excreta litters the settlements and is a major health hazard, especially in the rainy season when the settlements flood. In a shanty town in Nairobi, the only sanitation consists of pit latrines which may be shared between fifty to five hundred people, and as there is no refuse collection the refuse is thrown into any available space.
Traffic congestion and Pollution and major problems all over the world, but traffic congestion can be much more acute in LEDC cities than In MEDC cities. In LEDC cities it isn’t just the cars, lorries and buses that compete for road space and want to travel places, but its also scooters, donkeys, cows, rickshaws and pedestrians. The extra traffic prevents the cars and buses getting around quicker and so holds them up in traffic jams, which creates more air and noise pollution. The accident rate is also very high in LEDC cities. In the shanty town areas the roads may only be dirt tracks and few own a bicycle, let alone a car, so they rely on walking or public transport to get around. This of course reduces some pollution, but in other areas pollution is becoming increasingly worrying. In Mexico City children were told to stay home as air pollution had reached dangerously high levels.
In shanty towns there are usually no jobs and so employment can be a major problem. People often have no skills and so around one in three join the informal sector of employment as street traders, roadside merchants, domestic servants, watchmen and cleaners. Others use their homes as a work place and sell food, clothes, wood or metal. A woman from Bombay sold food to street children in return for the paper that they picked up off the streets. Many people are busy but are underemployed, only earning little amounts of money. Sometimes agriculture can be a key source of income, but in Ceara, Brazil the droughts and pests affected the crops, which then affected the farmers income. The land ownership in Ceara is also very unequal and the productivity can be very low, so only two in three men regular employment.
Lastly, the problem of education. This is a serious problem, especially among young women, as it indirectly contributes to high infant mortality. Mothers may lack knowledge of simple childcare because of the lack of education they received when younger. Because children do not go to school or only manage primary school, they remain illiterate and lack the skills to gain jobs. In some settlements a small school is set up enabling the teaching of children to happen, but these schools only teach basics and are not in all settlements. In Nairobi, 20 clinics were set up by non-government and community organisations which are free and the average class size is around 55 pupils. But still with this help towards better education one third of children still do not receive education.
Overall we can see that LEDC cities are not well equipped and the facilities that they do have are of poor quality and are only in small amounts. The cities will carry on growing and without solutions to the problems currently around, more problems will grow.
