By Mehtab Haider
ISLAMABAD: With a lack of professional team at the top in the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics ...
By Mehtab Haider
ISLAMABAD: With a lack of professional team at the top in the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) responsible for holding the next population census, the Council of Common Interests (CCI) under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is going to take the final decision on it with the possibility of postponing it for the next six months till September/ October 2016.
Earlier, the CCI had decided to hold the next census by March/April under the supervision of the army.There are a total of 166,801 blocks all over the country needing 375,000 soldiers which cannot be spared by the army at the moment. In verbal discussions, the army has indicated provision of only 100,000 personnel for holding the census.
With deployment of 100,000 army Jawans, the holding of house listing and population census is possible if the security plan is devised in such a way that one enumerator along with one soldier is deployed in troubled areas such as in urban Sindh, especially in Karachi and Hyderabad, and some parts of Balochistan while in other parts of the country the army’s role should be restricted only to supervision.
“But the PBS high-ups, who never held a census before in their whole career, are proposing census by May this year which is impossible because of many factors including the wheat harvesting season in Punjab,” said the sources.
There are only two seasons feasible for the census in Pakistan and India, one is March/April and the second is Sept/October period.
Finance Minister Ishaq Dar got infuriated with the PBS high-ups and warned them that he would apprise the CCI about their lax attitude if they remained unable to devise all required arrangements, including the deployment of the army for holding the next census.“We want a credible census having trust of all political parties,” the sources quoted the minister as saying during the official meeting.
At a time when Sindh has convened the All Parties Conference (APC) to press upon the Centre for holding the population census in a more credible manner and without any delay, the CCI will take the final decision this week either to postpone till July 2016 with suitable timeframe of October or assign one enumerator for two to three blocks instead of one block for one enumerator.
In case of one enumerator for two to three blocks, the requirement for the army Jawans would decrease drastically but it was yet to be seen how many troops could be spared by the army from its other hectic engagements.
Finance Minister Ishaq Dar desired to hold the population census during the tenure of PML-N government, so he got infuriated with the slack attitude of the top guns of Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Saturday afternoon for handling arrangements for holding the population census in a timely manner.
Asked about the holding of the next population census by The News, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar replied that the census decision would be discussed and decided in the CCI meeting scheduled to be held within this week. However, the sources said Dar showed anger at the PBS high-ups and warned them to avoid a lax attitude for holding this important national task.
“The minister directed them to finalise security arrangements so that the CCI can take a decision in its next meeting,” said the sources.There are two possibilities which will come under consideration in the CCI meeting. Most likely the government is going to postpone the holding of the census till Sept/October this year.
With the supervision of the army, the population census was simply impossible keeping in view the experience of 2011 when in some parts of Karachi house listing showed 600 people were living in one flat.
When the government decided to scrap its results, one party leader visited the office of PBS and even used threatening language to convince the high-ups for continuation of the exercise but finally the whole process was scrapped at that time.
Now, again the holding of census without the army’s supervision will be simply impossible and the CCI would be the appropriate constitutional forum to take the final decision on this subject in consultation with chief ministers of the respective provincial governments.
Balochistan, the sources said, also refused to allow the holding of census before resolving the issue of counting the Afghan nationals.“We will not accept such population census where Afghans will be counted as part of our population,” they added.
On this subject, the PBS high-ups argued that there was no mechanism available with them to differentiate among the locals and the Afghan nationals possessing Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs).“There is no mechanism available to make a judgment at the local level by enumerators,” said the official.—Originally published in The News