ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court directed Department of Statistics to count disabled persons and transgenders in 6th Housing and Population Census continued in country.
A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Saqib Nisar passed these directions while hearing the case regarding disabled persons not being counted in census.
Chief Justice questioned Statistics Department Chief Asif Bajwa how to acquire the data of disabled persons, on which Asif Bajwa told the court that the data will be collected again after three months.
Chief Justice expressed displeasure over not gathering pink and green forms at the same time.
Asif Bajwa apprised the court that military services were being acquired only for ten days for this process and due to low number of human resource, all data cannot be collected simultaneously.
Chief justice asked new forms were not published in order to meet the challenge and subsequently directed Statistics Department to implement Lahore High Court orders, saying that disabled men would be mentioned in column number four, women in column number five and transgender in column number six in the census form.
Asif Bajwa said due to shortage of human resource, at this time collecting data of disabled and transgender persons could raise question over the fairness of the census, and suggested that a survey should be conducted after three months in which transparent data could be collected.
The chief Justice directed to collect data in the current census and after three month another survey should be held to compare the count. Later, he disposed of the application.
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