Countrywide household census begins today

ISLAMABAD: The 6th Population and Housing Census in the country including the four provinces will start from today (Tuesday) and the process of house-listing will be done in the first phase.

The first phase of house-listing operation will continue till April 19 while in the second phase census enumeration would be held throughout the country from September 12 to 27 of 2011. In the first phase, house numbering/listing will be done to identify residential and non-residential housing units and inventory of households will be maintained. The enumerators will collect information about each individual during interaction with the head or responsible of the household in door-to-door visit during the second phase.

The Population Census Organisation (PCO), an attached department of Statistics Division, has delimited the country on a four-tier system for complete coverage and effective field supervision. The country has been divided into 424 census districts (tehsils/ towns and cantts), 3,203 census charges (kano go/ town or part of town /cantt), 22,398 census circle (patwar circle/part of town /cantt) and 146,230 census blocks (village, part of town).

Each census block will roughly comprise of 200 houses and one block will be assigned to one enumerator. In urban areas, one census charge will consist of 5 to 7 circles, census circle will comprise of 5 to 7 blocks and each bloc will consist of 200 to 250 houses. The census charge will consist of total number of patwar circles and census circle will comprise of total number of mauzas in rural areas. A mauza consisting of 200 to 250 houses has been declared as census block in the rural areas.