Paper forms being distributed for census despite PBS’s prohibition

While the country’s first digital population count is in its final stages, complaints of use of paper forms by enumerators have been surfacing in Karachi.

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), which is mandated to hold the census under the General Statistics (Reorganization) Act 2011, has repeatedly asserted that paper forms should not be used in the digital census. However, PBS officials also say that the census operations are supervised by the provincial administrations and assistant commissioners who must ensure enumeration to be strictly done on tablets.

On the recommendations of the Census Advisory Committee (CAC), the PBS gave a provision of a secured self-enumeration portal to everyone in Pakistan in a bid to make the “process more transparent and widely accepted by the masses in order to build confidence building measures on this national level assignment.”

The process of self-enumeration kicked off on February 20 and was supposed to last until March 3. However, at the request of the Sindh government, the date was extended until March 10.

Speaking at a Twitter Space on Saturday night, PBS Coordinator Muhammad Sarwar Gondal maintained that the operations of enumerations were taking place under the provincial government.

Another official of the PBS told The News that they had issued strict directions against the use of paper forms that had to be implemented by the assistant commissioners working under the Sindh government.

However, he said the PBS could not take any action against the negligent assistant commissioners. The PBS has formed 37 census districts in Karachi based on cantonment areas and subdivisions. The assistant commissioners and chief executive officers of the cantonment areas are responsible for the census districts in their respective areas.

The bureau has asked the people of Karachi to lodge a complaint at their number 021-99225229 if any enumerator has not reached their homes or if they have distributed paper forms.

Digital, but with paper

A resident of North Nazimabad Block J in District Central, Muhammad Umair, had self-enumerated his all family members before March 10. He told The News how on March 29, enumerators left a census form at his place and asked his wife to fill that up telling her they would collect the form after a few days.

“They left paper forms in all the houses in my building,” he said, adding that since he had already opted for the self-enumeration process, he did not fill the form and lodged a complaint at the PBS complaint centre regarding the paper form.

The complaint worked. After 9:30pm on Sunday night, Umair said, an enumerator came to his place with a tablet and also mentioned his complaint lodged at the PBS office. The enumerator entered his Unique Token Code Number (UTCN) in the tablet after which Umair’s family was enumerated.

However, from other houses in the building, enumerators collected the paper forms and entered information in the tablet. A few houses, Umair said, were locked as their residents had gone for Taraweeh prayers.

A similar case is of Gulshan-e-Iqbal Rizvia Society, a subdivision of District East. A resident of society Ali Areeze told The News that an enumerator had left a paper form at his house on Monday, March 27, and asked them to leave the filled form at the society gate.

There are at least 500 houses in the society, Areeze said. He added that he also lodged a complaint at the PBS helpline but until Sunday evening no action had been taken nor did any enumerator visit their society’s office for the collection of paper forms.

On Thursday, enumerators came with a register at the residence of economist and urban issues expert Dr Asim Bashir in District East’s subdivision Gulshan-e-Iqbal Block 13-B. Dr Bashir, who has expertise in local government laws and census, had also self-enumerated himself. He mentioned in his Facebook post that the enumerator who came to his house entered the data in a register and told him that the information would be entered in the tablet later.

The enumerator told him that a software update was required in their application, due to which they were recording the information on paper. Distribution of paper forms was also reported from several areas of Defence Housing Authority in District South.

Talking to The News, Dr Bashir said how it would be ensured that the enumerators had entered information, that too correct, from the paper forms into the tablets. “I have four houses on my floor and I was the only one who had self-enumerated myself,” he stated, adding that his data could not be forged or skipped as it was already in the PBS system.

But if the other three houses who had not self-enumerated were skipped by the enumerators, they would not be in the database of the PBS and would not be counted. “Most of such complaints are coming from areas inhabited by Urdu-speaking people,” Dr Bashir maintained.

Urban planners and experts have estimated that the population figure of Karachi will emerge as around 17.5 million after the ongoing census through a total household count of 2.924 million, which has already been done in the first phase of the census.

On this, Dr Bashir said there had been severe discrepancies in the household count, due to which the population count was being estimated so low. “They haven’t completed the household listing properly,” he stressed.

On the GIS, he said, only buildings and structures had been tagged, not the households. The household information would be shown through the structure’s tagging, however, the households were not tagged separately, he added. He explained that if the number of households in buildings and structures was understated, it would result in understating of the population.

Officials’ view

Meanwhile, Gulshan Subdivision Assistant Commissioner Sattar Hakro said the population count in 50 per cent of the subdivision was remaining as the size of the subdivision is huge. He said if any enumerator was distributing paper forms, people should lodge a complaint in writing with the PBS office.

A PBS official for the Gulshan subdivision, Masood Ali Khan, told The News that they had issued strict directions to all the enumerators, whether they were from the health or education departments of the province, not to use paper forms. He maintained that the bureau was continuously taking action on complaints against the paper form distributions.