UNFPA outlines 15 prerequisites for transparent census in country

Asks govt to involve military in elaborated
manner for credible outcome

ISLAMABAD: Outlining 15 major pre-requisites for holding the upcoming census in a transparent manner, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has asked Pakistan to involve the military in an elaborated and documented manner to ensure credible outcome and conduct the pilot exercise for training the staff to equip them ahead of full-fledged operation.

An official communication sent out by the UNFPA representative in Pakistan Hasan Mohtashami to Federal Minister for Finance Ishaq Dar and Chief Statistician Asif Bajwa states that now that the prospects of conducting the field-count phase of the census are more promising,  the UNFPA would like to provide a summary of technical aspects and points of attention for the Pakistan census, which have been highlighted by their consultants as well as the UNFPA Headquarters and Regional Office missions as these points need urgent attention to ensure quality of the exercise and its adherence to international norms and standards.

1)  Ensuring a credible outcome requires the rationale and process of the involvement of military to well-elaborated and documented.

Especially the operation at the household level requires detailed protocol/SOPs for two-member enumerator-soldier field teams, which clears role and responsibilities and trainings needs/manuals. 

2)  In line with international standards, all refugees including those living in refugee camps should be enumerated. 

3)  The Census Master Plan (CMP) needs to be updated to dispel potential confusion over "de jure" versus "de facto' enumeration, and clarify exactly who is to be counted within the household. 

4)  An amendment sheet needs to be provided to all training manuals that explicitly addresses the inclusion criteria, and the ambiguous language on the Short Form regarding "de jure versus de facto' enumeration. 

5)  Regarding the proposed "de facto" enumeration within institutions we reiterate the suggestion of UNFPA’s consultant to 'look again at the methodology for the institutions; and to pay special attention when reconstructing the total population during the data analysis." 

6)  The CMP needs to be further updated to reflect the level of actual planning underway including staffing, a timeline, and a corresponding Gannt chart that extends to post-enumeration 

7)  We recommend that once the final dates for the census have been approved, PBS undertake a thorough pilot census of the mobilization and preparation of field staff, deployment and use of field materials, use of maps, the household level procedures for soldiers and enumerator, the transport of forms from field sites to Islamabad, editing and scanning/data, capturing and processing. We recommend that the pilot census include experts from other agencies, such as UNFPA, to provide external support for the testing of final readiness. 

8)  We recommend planning of extension of two days per enumeration area and progress after seven days to determine if any added time is needed. We recommend daily progress form for data collection, which would be reported daily to supervisors and its progress is closely monitored. 

9) We recommend to refresh the training of all staff much closer to the date of field operations, with supervisors undertaking several hours to review" training on the first day of the household listing. 

10) UNFPA consultants have provided a range of detailed suggestions to assure optimal use of the forms that we recommend to be noted and adopted, including adding a transgender option, carefully numbering household members above 10, not confusing mother tongue with ethnicity among others. 

11) Census communication strategy/plan needs to be immediately developed and initiated, and to be elaborated for census staff, community leaders, general public, civil society activists, media/press, politicians, academic research groups, development partners and groups likely to question the findings. 

12) All parts of the federal government, as well as provincial and local governments, need to be fully informed about the census so that they can prepare to utilize the census results for planning their policies and programs. 

13) The status of new IT and scanning set up, and of the additional needed questionnaires need to be affirmed, to ensure full functionality of IT and scanners system and availability of the Questionnaires prior to the field count.

14) PBS is encouraged to consider the use of impartial national and international observers at the time of the field operations of census.  

15) We recommend planning for the eventual sharing of a representative sample of the micro-data with population experts within Pakistan, and through the public-access census platform of IPUMS.