UC, town maps to be drawn up in Sindh to avoid overlapping in uplift plans

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has decided to develop development maps from the union council to town levels in Sindh which will help avoid duplication and overlapping in the development plans and fill in gaps due to lack of resources.

“We need to map the population of each area, from the union council to the town level, to identify the available municipal, educational, health, sports, and recreational facilities, as well as the development of infrastructure. This will enable us to develop a development plan that takes into account any missing facilities,” the CM said while presiding over a meeting on Wednesday where Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) chief Dr Nadeem Uz Zafar gave a briefing on the population, education, health, and other facilities in Sindh.

The meeting was held at the CM House and attended by Chief Secretary Asif Hyder Shah, Principal Secretary to CM Agha Wasif, Chairman Planning and Development Najam Shah, PBS Member Sarwar Gondal, Rabia Awan and other officials concerned. Dr Nadeem Uz Zafar told the CM that the sectors covered in Census 2023 included education, employment, functional limitation (disabilities), housing, geocoding of all building structures and demographic characteristics.

At this, the CM said he needed data on migration also. “We must know how many people from other countries and the provinces come to Sindh every year so that policies and services can be planned accordingly. We have to assess how much pressure through migration is exerted on the resources of the province so that necessary planning and resource mobilisation could be made,” he said and directed the Planning & Development Department to develop a databank and keep it updated through regular surveys by the provincial Bureau of Statistics.

Shah said that he was interested in mapping for education so that the deprived areas could be identified. “When the deprived areas would be identified we would be able to target the resources and develop response policy,” he said.

Interesting facts emerged during the discussion in the meeting such as Karachi Central has 22.7 per cent of children who were out of school and has the highest literacy rate of 83.6 per cent in the province.

Thatta has the highest 75.8 per cent of out-of-school children and the lowest literacy ratio of 26.9 per cent. Shah after going through the data said that areas in Karachi Central had up to 99.1 per cent electricity resources while Tharparkar which produces 3500MW of coal-based electricity has 19.4 per cent electricity resources. This is very important data through which the least developed districts in terms of facilities could be focused.

He said that he wanted a complete mapping of the households in every union council with an electricity facility so that deprived UC/households could be covered through solar systems. He directed the Planning & Development Department to activate the provincial Bureau of Statistics and direct them to develop maps of every union council and town in terms of facilities so that deprived districts could be focused.

“The PBS would help and support the Sindh Bureau of Statistics and further they would have to survey on their own,” the CM said.