Ensure no illegal immigrants are counted, orders CM

Murad says he will take up issue of missing religions

and languages in census form with federal govt

The Sindh chief minister on Monday ordered the authorities concerned to ensure that foreigners and illegal immigrants were not counted in the upcoming census.

Presiding over a cabinet meeting at the New Sindh Secretariat, Murad Ali Shah said there were legal and political impacts of the census because it provided the basis for political representation in the assemblies, delimitation of constituencies, distribution of funds from divisible pool and determination of quota for recruitment to civil positions in the federal government. “Therefore, it’s necessary that every citizen of the province was counted,” he added.

The meeting was attended by all provincial ministers, advisers, and special assistants, chief secretary Rizwan Memon, IGP AD Khowaja, chief statistician Asif Bajwan, National Database and Registration Authority representative Sohail and other senior officers.

The agenda of the cabinet meeting included the population and housing census, the law and order situation, the food authority bill, the law on the collection of Ushr, and shelter homes,.

The chief minister postponed the other items and allowed a presentation and discussion on the census and a briefing by the Nadra representative.

The chief statistician said that so far, five censuses had been conducted in the country in 1951, 1961, 1972, 1981 and 1998.

The 6th population and housing census was due in 2008 but could not be held and now it would start from March 15, 2017 as approved by the Council of Common Interests in a meeting held on December 16 last year.

The cabinet was told that the house listing and census operation would be carried out in one-go.

A Form 2 would be used in census. A form 2-A will be filled in on a sample basis after the census operation is over.

On this, provincial minister Mukesh Kumar Chawla said the Form 2-A carried important information on migrations, age disabilities etc. “It’s an important form and must be included in the census in a formal way,” he added.

The chief minister told him that he would take up the issue with the federal government.

Field operation

About the field operation, the cabinet was informed that there was an enumeration method under which information would be collected and recorded on questionnaires through a door-to-door campaign.

The population count will be recorded at citizens’ residences.

All people living in the country, except diplomats and refugees living in camps, will be counted in the process.

Under the field operation, the house listing and the population and housing census will be conducted in one go, meaning first three days will be used for house listing followed by 10 days for the census operation and one day for the homeless population.

The census will be conducted in two phases and the operation would start simultaneously in all provinces.

The cabinet was told that that there were 29 administrative district and 146 census districts in the province which included 932 census charges, 5,132 census circles and 38,842 census blocks.

Each block will be completed in 14 days and three days for house numbering, 10 days for filling Form-2 and one day for the enumeration of the homeless population.  Two blocks will be assigned to one enumerator, each phase will be completed in 30 days and the second phase will start with a gap of 10 days. A soldier will accompany each enumerator.

As per the phase-wise field operation plan, the three-day house listing operation will carry on from March 15 to 17, block-wise 10-day filling of Form-2 from March 18 to March 17, and a one-day enumeration of the homeless population at one-day per block on March 28.

The retrieval of filled documents and issuance of census material for the second block will take place on March 29 and 30.

The second phase of the house listing operation will carry on from May 11 to May 13.

Four tiers

The cabinet was informed that for a complete coverage and effective field supervision, the country has been delimited to four tiers – a census district comprising district/taluka/cantonments/agencies and census charge comprising qanungo halqa/part of urban area/ cantonment. There are five to seven circles are in a charge. The census circle comprises patwar circle/part of urban area/cantonment and five to seven blocks in a circle and each circle has 1,500 houses on an average.

A census block has 200 to 250 houses.

The first phase will start in Karachi (all districts), Hyderabad and Ghotki and the second will cover the rest of the districts of the province.

Field force

The cabinet was informed that census required a field force of 28,038 enumerators and supervisors in the province. For this he purpose, the employees of provincial education, revenue, local government, population welfare and other departments would be appointed. The appointment of the staff has already been started.

The chief minister was told that the training of the trainers and enumerators will start on January 24 and February 4 respectively.

Around 183 trainers will train 28,038 field staffers in 704 batches for four days.

The chief minister was told that one soldier would accompany each enumerator. He would independently record the number of each household. The CNIC number of the head or any member of the household will be used for verification.

Vigilance teams will be formed at the census district level to monitor the work and ensure complete coverage of the population.

Coordination committees have been formed at provincial, district and census district level.

A map of each census block showing landmarks will be provided to the enumerators/supervisors.

Census documents would be retrieved under sealed covers affixed with special stickers under the supervision of armed forces.

The cabinet was also informed a campaign will be launched to educate the masses and seek their cooperation.

The penalties for violations will also be informed to the public to ensure the credibility of census data and the forms having unique barcodes and photocopies or locally printed forms cannot be processed.

To a query, the chief minister was informed that provisional results would be declared in 60 days with advance tabulation on important characteristics to be made and regular reports would be made public. Subject- wise analytical reports on important topics and census atlas giving visual presentation of census days will also be issued.

Religions and languages

Provincial minister Manzoor Wassan said in the census form only six religions and 10 languages had been mentioned ignoring Zoroastrians and Gujrati, Kathiawari and other local languages. The chief minister pointed out that the mother tongue of the father of nation Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah was Gujrati and it should have been included in the form.

This way it will be easier to assess how many Zoroastrians and members of the Gujrati-speaking community and other languages live in Sindh.

The chief minister said he would take up these issues with federal government.

MPA Dr Mahesh Malani said that there was no provision of counting gypsies in the census.

On this, the chief statistician told him that they would be counted among the homeless people. 

Senior minister Nisar Khuhro said that there was no proper mechanism to file objections and remove them. On this, he was told that the supervision committee had an elected local body representative.

CNICs

The representative of the Nadra told the cabinet that there were 22.4 million people who had been issued CNICs and a population of 3.3 million was under 18 years. Replying to a question, he said Nadra had 30 mobile vehicles to issue CNICs, of them 13 would be sent to the areas where they were required to be issued.

On this, the chief minister said he was consulting with the cabinet members to identify the areas where CNICs needed to be issued.

Shah also pointed out that 13 vehicles were not enough to cater to the requirements in far-flung areas.

Replying to a question asked by minister Jam Khan Shoro, the Nadra representative said each mobile team could issue only 60 to 100 CNICs per day. On this, the cabinet decided to approach the federal government to increase the mobile teams.   

The cabinet was also informed that 15,000 CNICs were issued to residents of different areas of the province but they had not collected them, therefore the Nadra was going to destroy them.

The chief minister advised Nadra to make an attempt to deliver these cards to the people they were issued to. “My divisional and district administration will support you if you provide us with a a list of these cards,” he added.