Govt halts hiring of third party for revalidation of census exercise

ISLAMABAD: The government has halted the process of hiring third party for revalidation of census exercise after objections raised by the Senate committee led by Raja Zafarul Haq and now the Council of Common Interest (CCI) will take up this issue in the upcoming scheduled meeting next week.

“Instead of hiring third party for validation of census exercise in 5 percent area in Karachi, the senators asked the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) to involve demographers in this exercise to validate the last census,” official sources confirmed to The News here on Wednesday. In the aftermath of this directive, the PBS has referred back this issue to the CCI because the decisions taken by senator and CCI were contradictory to each, so the PBS did not find itself in position to take any decision on this subject unilaterally.

However, the PBS officials said that the CCI had taken the decision to hire third party through open bidding process but the senators advised them quite differently so they decided to refer back this issue to the CCI for getting final advice from the competent forum. “We are not in a position to take decision on this important issue without taking the CCI into confidence,” they added. When contacted, Secretary Statistics Division Rukhsana Yasmin said that she would be in a better position to brief on this subject after the CCI meeting takes place on March 27, 2018 under the chairmanship of the prime minister. “We have referred back to the CCI after senators advised to include members of the Lower House into the committee,” she added.

The Council of Common Interests (CCI) in its meeting held on 16th December, 2016 approved the summary submitted by the Statistics Division and decided that the 6th Population and Housing Census 2017 be taken from 15th March, 2017 in two phases and under the supervision of Armed Forces.

In order to conduct free, fair and transparent Population, and Housing Census in the country, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) completed all necessary arrangements like appointment and training of field staff, delimitation of census areas, printing of census maps and distribution of field use census material etc. The geographical area of the country was demarcated in small compact area called Census Blocks comprising 200-250 houses on an average.

As the census results show that the country’s total population stands at 207 million but political parties belonging to Karachi and Hyderabad raised hue and cry that they were not counted properly. Then the CCI again took up this issue and approved to hire third party for undertaking validation exercise in 5 percent area. The PBS had published advertisement and sought applications from interested parties.

When the process of selection was almost nearing of completion, the Senate formed a committee in which the Senators asked the PBS to involve independent experts in this process instead of hiring any third party.

After this directive, the PBS found itself clueless so they decided to again approach the CCI for seeking guidance to come out from this confusion because the delimitation exercise was almost done without accomplishing the task of revalidation of census exercise. “Now we don’t know how to proceed so we decided to go back to the CCI for getting guidance,” concluded the official.