ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Law and Justice Zahid Hamid on Thursday claimed that the government wanted to address the grievances and reservation raised by the provinces over the credibility of the census.
Winding up the debate on an adjournment motion in the Senate regarding the situation arising out of reservation expressed by various political parties over the census, the minister said that the entire census exercise was carried out under the direct control of provincial governments and district managements. “The census was held after 19 years. An amount of Rs 17 billion was incurred,” he said.
He said that all enumerators were employees of the provincial government and filed staff were also deputed by the deputy commissioner. He said technical committees of provinces were constituted for transparency and enhancing credibility on census process. “These technical committees of provinces visited Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) twice. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab committees expressed satisfaction over the .process The Sindh Committee had demanded block wise data for verification,” he said.
The minister said that field staff was appointed by the deputy commissioners and assistant commissioners. “Around 44,000 army personnel participated in this exercise for security and logistic support. Door-to-door visits were conducted during the census process following enumeration method. The enumerators accompanied by army representatives collected the details from houses and were authorised to send message to NADRA in case of suspicion of giving wrong information by the households,” he said.
He said these teams forward 6.2 million SMS to NADRA for verification, which showed that the process was transparent.
Zahid Hamid said that PBS provided policy guidelines. Control rooms at district, provincial and at center were set to monitor the census process. Five international and national teams also visited various areas during census process. All of them expressed satisfaction over the arrangements made for census. PBS followed boundaries notified by the provincial governments,” he said.
He said that Afghan refugees were also counted, but they were counted as non-Pakistani. About population in Lahore and Karachi, he said that Punjab government had extended boundary of Lahore in 2015 and even two union councils of Kasur district. “The Sindh government did not expand the boundary of Karachi,” he said.
“Lahore and Karachi populations both showed 4.14 per cent and 2.49 per cent respectively,” he said.
Meanwhile, Senator Farhatullah Babar compared Hazaras of Balochistan to the Rohingya Muslims as both were fleeing from their countries in desperation. Speaking on a call attention notice on the plight of Hazara community in the Senate, he said that if one was a Hazara, he was marked for assassination. “Even the police belonging to the community, have been targetted to warn that anyone who protected them will meet the same fate,” he said.
He said that Hazaras had been fleeing to Indonesia and Malaysia from where they have been seeking to travel by sea to Australia and Newland in search of safe heaven.
Published in Daily Times, November 10th 2017.
