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Thursday March 28, 2024

Govt ignored dissenting voices about census

By Tariq Butt
March 12, 2017

ISLAMABAD: The much-delayed grand exercise of population census and house listing will begin in two phases after three days across Pakistan with the assistance of the army personnel to ensure its watertight transparency despite opposition by certain political elements.

The government has ignored dissenting voices for the reason that the process, due in 2008, is already nine years behind schedule, and if it was deferred once again, it might not be organised in many years to come due to various pulls and pressures.

Successive governments continued to buckle under political arm-twisting and failed to arrange the house listing and population census that has created many problems, the most important being the lack of an updated, accurate data for planning and policy making.

Nearly 200,000 military men including officers and soldiers will work in aid of the civil administration. The last corps commanders’ meeting held on March 9 also reviewed the army’s support in conducting the census 2017 in which Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Bajwa said that the military would undertake this task as a national service.

Earlier, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General Maj-Gen Asif Ghafoor had stated that the army officers and soldiers would assist the civil administration in this exercise and would simultaneously continue their operational duties. Although the Pakistan Army is comprehensively engaged in anti-terrorism operations as part of the Raddul Fasaad, it has made adjustments to take care of this campaign and spare troops for the census as well.

When Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had earlier taken the decision to hold the census, he had to postpone it last year due to non-availability of the army troops because of their engagement in the Zarb-e-Azb. After the military agreed to assist, the dates of the census were firmed up.

After Independence, the first census was conducted in 1951; the second in 1961 while the third in 1972 instead of 1971 due to political environment and war with India. The fourth census was organised in March 1981 and fifth one due in 1991 was held in March, 1998 owing to specific circumstances.

The seats in the National Assembly are allocated to each province, tribal areas, Fata and Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) on the basis of the population in accordance with the last preceding census officially published under Article-51(3) of the Constitution. Further, distribution of funds among the federation and the provinces is made through National Finance Commission (NFC). Article-160(2) speaks about the formation of the NFC which also uses census figures. The quota for recruitment to federal posts is worked out on the basis of population ratios as given by the census. The first five censuses were undertaken with the legal cover of Census Ordinance, 1959. The 6th census will be held under the legal cover of General Statistics (Re-organization) Act, 2011.

The army’s supervision has been sought so that every political party and group has complete faith in its fairness. The presence of the troops also ensures that no vested interest succeeds in manipulating the figures to show an inflated population in any area of its influence.

Despite reservations aired by the National Party (NP) of Balochistan, an ally of the prime minister 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 and Shipping Mir Hasil Bizenjo had said that the situation could 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 government would make efforts so that the Afghan refugees living 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 for increased deployment of security forces.

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

In the present mode, the census will be conducted manually by the enumerators, the low paid government servants, who can be easily swayed into writing down in the specific proforma the details like number of people 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.