Census to be rejected if not held as per our demands, warn nationalists

Decide to revive Sindh Census Monitoring Committee to ensure process is fair

Ahead of the national census due in March, nationalist parties and civil organisations have decided to revive the Sindh Census Monitoring Committee (SCMC).

This was stated by Sindh United Party chief Syed Jalal Mehmood Shah while briefing the media on the decisions taken by the committee, which met at Hyder Manzil on Thursday. Among those who attended the meeting were Sanaan Qureshi, Haji Shafi Jamote, Iqbal Tareen, Riaz Chandio, Soofi Huzoor Bux and Qamar Bhatti.

The meeting asked the government to remove anomalies, warning that any failure to do so would result in rejection of the national census by the people of Sindh. 

The census monitoring committee, a constituent of national parties and civil organisations, adopted various resolutions at the meeting.

One of the resolutions said the continuous migration into the province had affected the ethnic mix in Sindh. It demanded that Bengalis, Afghans and other illegal immigrants holding fake national identity cards should be counted separately and should not be considered citizens at any cost.

The committee resolved that all those entering the province should be registered.

Other resolutions stated that the census ought to be deliberated upon and implemented in light of the decisions taken and policies formulated by the Council of Common Interests. Before undertaking the census, the relevant staff should be given special training, they said.

Many villages have been omitted because of old maps, separate numbers are not being assigned to households residing in Kutcha and semi-Pucca dwellings within the same compound, while shops, warehouse storage outlets and toilets are being given separate numbers in cities, according to the resolutions. 

The committee said those living near rivers should also be counted. It urged that the census staff should be appointed on a merit basis and the entire process be monitored by the Sindh Statistics Bureau.

The committee also demanded that after the census, all illegal immigrants should be sent back.

Shah said concerns about the upcoming census in Sindh were genuine and should be addressed. Besides, he said, satellite imaging must be made use of to ensure that exercise was fair.  The census form should clearly distinguish between citizens and aliens as well as between permanent and temporary residents. Such differentiation is necessary to identity and repatriate illegal immigrants from the province.

The meeting further demanded that the government should articulate a policy and the required mechanism for carrying out the census. It called for counting over three million immigrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar as aliens as well as for cancelling their dubious CNICs.

The census staff were neither trained nor equipped with the necessary material and facilities, the participants said.

Shah appealed to the people living in Sindh, regardless of what language they spoke, to fill in the census form in Sindhi as their first language so that Sindh’s rights could be safeguarded because resources, including jobs and development funds, were distributed on the basis of the census.

He said Sindh whose civilisation was thousands of years’ old and which had the honour of being the first to pass the resolution for the creating of Pakistan was being pushed into obscurity.