Unavailability of forces, forms cause census delay

ISLAMABAD: Unavailability of armed personals, fresh census forms, differences on use electronics devices to count persons and to connect the census data with Nadra are the causes for postponement of population and homes census, The News has learnt reliably.

A senior leader, who attended the CCI special meeting held last week, told The News that though it has been postponed due to unavailability of armed forces but the fact was that federal departments didn’t have coordinated among themselves and no effort was made to solve this long standing issue. 

He said there was a proposal from the armed forces that population census should be held in different phases, which will bring required armed forces personals down to one fourth from present requirement of 166000, which can be provided easily. But every team of numerators comprising armed personals and civil employees should be given electronic device to record finger prints. This will ensure transparency of census and lessen number of armed forces personals required in population and home census. 

This looked proper proposal and workable, the political leader from smaller province told this correspondent. The federal government, especially Federal Bureau of Statistic (FBS) was not ready for this exercise. Then they wanted, at any cast, to conduct population census same time all over the country as per international standards. Pakistan’s situation, specially law and order situation, was not taken into consideration.

Further that there was an excuse that numerators were not trained to use electronic devices worth Rs6/7 billion. A senior official stated that the census forms available with FBS can count the persons but cannot identify how many of them were Pakistani nationals and how many were refugees or illegal residents. 

FBS’s point of view was that census forms had already been printed from UK and fresh printing of forms has to be done from UK which will again require lengthy process and again funds to the tune of billion rupees.

Another proposal to connect FBS’s information with the Nadra was also dropped by the FBS on the excuse that according to law FBS can’t share its data with other departments.  Another senior bureaucrat who attended the meeting commented on this excuse very sarcastically, “If the political will is there constitutional amended can be brought but on population census, which is urgent need of country, political leadership cannot take any decision.”