close
Thursday March 28, 2024

PPP unsatisfied with validation of census

By Our Correspondent
March 21, 2018

ISLAMABAD: Senior Leader of Pakistan People’s Party Taj Haider Tuesday said, “I had returned very disappointed from the meeting of the Senators Monitoring Committee on Validation of Census 2017 and sadly chairman of the committee had opted for finding excuses for further postponement of the implementation of the Agreement.”

Instead of seeking nomination of a demographer from Punjab and finalising the formation of the Census Commission as provided for in the Agreement signed by parliamentary leaders of all political parties, the issue is being ignored, he said while talking to The News.

The meeting was chaired by Leader of the House in the Senate Raja Zafarul Haq. Taj Haider said it was sad and worrisome that even the right of people of Sindh to be counted correctly was being trampled upon by the “House of the Federation”.

He said that a number of officials of the Statistics Division had been allowed inside the Committee Room, while the media was barred from covering the meeting.

He said Minister for Statistics Division Senator Kamran Micheal did not attend the meeting. “This anti-Sindh methodology had been rejected by all political parties in the meeting presided over by the Prime Minister and the consensus agreement was based on de-facto method of counting which includes everyone residing in a province,” he said.

He said since many decades, other provinces instead of creating employment opportunities locally have adopted a policy of pushing their un-employed to Sindh. “This policy has caused serious unemployment problems for the permanent residents of Sindh. Cognizant of this danger, Article 15 of the 1973 Constitution has put the condition of “any reasonable restriction imposed by law in the public interest” over “Freedom of Movement,” he said.

Taj Haider said having cardinal faith in Federalism and the Brotherhood of working classes, PPP has never thought of putting any restrictions in this regard but does it mean that the millions and millions of migrants and illegal residing in Sindh should not even be counted.

Taj Haider said that besides for usurping its right of higher representation in Federal elected and non-elected institutions, Sindh on whose taxes and mineral resources the entire Federation was depending was being deprived of its genuine share in the Federal Divisible Pool. “The estimated losses to Sindh on this account alone are estimated to 24 billion in the current year. It is a pity that those who benefit from Sindh continue to speak and work against Sindh night and day,” he said.

He said that such attitudes as adopted by the PML-N government cut at the roots of the Federation. Taj Haider said in the present state of virtual economic and political anarchy brought about by PML-N leadership it was crucial that wisdom and justice prevailed.

He hoped that critics of PPP would now understand why it was important for us in the elections for Chairman Senate to defeat the PML-N candidate and support a candidate from the most deprived province of Baluchistan.