Criticality of census explained

ZAHEER ABBASI

ISLAMABAD: The government has emphasised the importance of population census for equitable distribution of resources as well as calculation of per capita income, GDP growth and future planning of the country amid serious concerns of political parties over absence of sufficient measures of transparency.

A meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Finance presided over by Senator Saleem Mandviwalla went through a marathon session on Monday on the scheduled population census starting from March 15 across the country after a delay of 19 years.

Chief Census Commissioner Asif Bajwa tried to explain the importance of census and stated that it would help the government know about the per capita income of the country, growth in GDP in comparison to population growth and more importantly 82 per cent distribution of National Finance Commission, which is based on the criterion of population.

The demarcation of the constituencies, both national and provincial assemblies, would also be based on the population, he added.

There is a fine of Rs50,000 and a six-month imprisonment on providing false information through census form, he said in response to concerns of the committee members that sufficient steps seem to be missing to ensure transparency.

The committee on the request of Senator Saleh Shah recommended that a form for IDPs should be distributed across the country to ensure their count in the census and remove the apprehensions of the senators of FATA in this regard.

Asked by the members why migration was included in 2017 census forms, the census commissioner said the meeting of Council of Common Interests (CCI) held on December 16, 2016 decided that due to limited availability of personnel of armed forces, a survey with 2-A form would include migration and unemployment, etc, data.

The meeting was informed that Pakistan falls among Afghanistan, Somalia and Lebanon where census could not be conducted primarily for law and order situation while it was regularly carried out in neighbouring countries India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Professor Mehtab, who had served as demographist in the UN as well as in Saudi Arabia and was involved in the review of 1998 population census, was invited to give a presentation and briefing to the committee, stated, Census without post-enumeration (cross checking of the collected data) will have no credibility for the international organisations.

He added Pakistan was not as bad in terms of law and order situation as were Somalia, Afghanistan and Lebanon and attributed the delay in census to political reasons, distribution of resources as well as job quotas.

He also pointed out there were reasons to believe that population of Sindh province was undercounted in the census conducted in 1998 and subsequent review revealed some defects in the survey as 5-7 million people were missing from being counted. He said due to migration, some provinces were gaining while others were losing and population census reflected that population in Punjab had been decreasing since 1971 while it had been increasing in Sindh.

Senators from Balochistan, Usman Khan Kakar and Mir Kabir Ahmed while Saleh Shah from Fata expressed serious apprehensions about the transparency of the upcoming population census and stated that lack of transparency would harm the federation because of sensitivity attached to both Baloch and Pakhtoon populations in the province of Balochistan.

The senators from Fata and Balochistan said that people from Fata and seven districts of the province had migrated to other parts of the country in a large number due to ongoing insurgency and if some mechanism for their transparent count was not ensured, they could consider the option of boycotting the census.