Count us before countdown starts: MQM convener

KARACHI: Expressing concern over anomalies in the ongoing census drive, Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan (MQM-P) Convener Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui has said that the population of urban areas of Sindh was under-represented.

Addressing the participants of an Iftar party in Korangi Town on Sunday, the convener, MQM-P, said Karachi is the economic and political artery as well as the ideological capital of the country, which is more important than the IMF for the country.

He urged the party workers, supporters and voters to get themselves counted as the government “wants us not to be counted.”

How a state, which cannot count its people, could fix people’s problems, asked Siddiqui and warned, “Count us before the countdown starts.”

He said, “The census is our red line. We recognize everyone’s rights and identity, so our rights and identity should also be recognized.”

“As a political party, we can only demand a transparent census,” said the MQM-P convener.

Earlier, Siddiqui, while chairing a meeting of the coordination committee of the party, discussed the current political, economic and security situation of the country with the party leaders. The meeting agreed that the census conducted so far by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics was not transparent.

The coordination committee expressed concern over the ongoing census drive and said that the enumerators failed to reach many areas.

They alleged that the enumerators were undercounting households, saying if a family has 8 or 9 members, the enumerators were only noting down 4 or 5 members.

In addition, the MQM-P coordination committee said, the enumerators are not going to multi-storied buildings, which will render 7 to 8 million urban population uncounted.