From Zeeshan Mirza
KARACHI: The Mutahidda Qaumi Movement-P (MQM-P) has written a letter showing reservations about the census.
MPA Hameed wrote the letter for an extension in the digital census date. It stressed that persons who are not using the smartphone could be skipped
A total of 10 days instead of 3 should be allocated for house census, the party stressed in the letter, adding that it is not possible to count the houses in a densely populated city like Karachi in three days. The whole process of counting the population should be done with transparency.
Reportedly, the census will begin on March 1. A spokesperson for the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, Muhammad Sarwar Gondal, said a portal has al-ready been launched so that people can submit their data themselves and don’t need to face the botheration of giving data to census teams visiting door-to-door.
He said more than 4 million people have already been registered at the portal and a UTN number will be issued to them after their data is saved. He said 121,000 field enumerators have been deployed for the field operation of the census which is beginning on Wednesday.
This process will be completed by 1st April and the data will be released by 30th of April which will then be approved by the Council of Common Inter-ests, he said, adding that this will be the evidence-based authentic data as per international standards which will be used for constituency delimitation in next general elections as well as for public policy planning.
