COAS’s step makes census sure

ISLAMABAD: The much-delayed sixth population census and housing listing scheduled to start on March 15 has become absolutely certain after Chief of Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa has decided to spare 200,000 troops for the exercise.

Last year, the census was postponed once again due to non-availability of the army troops because of their intensive engagement in different operations including the Zarb-e-Azb.

The army’s supervision is required to conduct the exercise so that every political party and group has a complete faith in its transparency and fairness. The presence of the troops also ensures that no vested interest succeeds in manipulating the census to show an inflated population in any specific area of its influence.

Previously, the federal government stated that it would need 250,000 troops for the census in one go. However, later it decided that it would hold the exercise in two phases. This apparently helped bring down the number of troops required at one time.

Despite reservations aired by the National Party (NP) of Balochistan, an ally of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the federal and provincial levels, the government is going ahead with the census as per the decided timeframe.

NP President and Minister for Ports & Shipping Mir Hasil Bizenjo had said that the situation can be marred if census was conducted in the presence of Afghan refugees in Balochistan.

“The positive results of the ongoing efforts to improve the state of affairs in Balochistan can produce negative consequences.

First a mini census of Afghan refugees be carried out and they should be confined to camps. Only then, there can be room for national census in Balochistan,” he had said.

The first part of the two-phase census will start from March 15 in selected areas. However, the entire Balochistan comprising six divisions of Quetta, Zhob, Sibi, Naseerabad, Kalat and Makran will be covered in the first phase.

The opposition to the census by Bizenjo and some other nationalist parties of Balochistan apart, the government conclusively decided to hold the process on the order of the Supreme Court, which pushed it hard not to delay it further. The government had given a firm commitment to the top court to conduct the exercise.

The government would make maximum efforts so that the Afghan refugees in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) are not listed in the census. The problem will, however, arise where these Afghans have got identity cards of Pakistan.

The federal government has asked the provinces to identify sensitive areas which would be handed over to the armed forces for conducting the census.

The exercise will be held on traditional method using paper based questionnaires starting as per the field operation plan given by the Statistics Division.

The inordinate delay in census has caused several difficulties, a principal being the absence of accurate data of population and housing units all over Pakistan, to determine different factors. There may be increase in seats of the National Assembly for some province in the wake of the census.

There have always been massive complaints about manipulation in the census by some political parties in certain areas. In the past, according to official documents, the results demonstrated a trend of over enumeration in the areas of Sindh and Balochistan while Punjab reflected under enumeration.

This impacted on the population proportion of all the provinces compared with 1998 census. The Sindh’s share in population increased by 6pc and that of Balochistan went up by 2pc while share of Punjab reduced by 8pc. This was going to have serious political implications as the intense fights among provinces regarding allocation of parliamentary seats and distribution of resources was to be affected.

In the present mode, the census will be carried out manually by the enumerators, the low paid government servants, who are easily swayed into writing down in the specific pro-forma the details like number of people living in a certain house provided to them by the politically motivated inhabitants. The census personnel don’t bother or are not allowed by powerful elements to do physical verification of the members of the families, which resultantly inflates the number, fudging the exercise.