ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s largest-ever population census was kicked off today in 63 districts of the country after a delay of 19 years.
As many as 118,000 enumerators from different departments, including the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), had been provided training for carrying out the exercise. Moreover, 175,000 army personnel have also been deployed in the districts.
The army personnel would be involved in enumeration as well as providing security to the surveyors.
The first phase of the exercise will end on April 15. The second phase will commence on April 25 and end on May 25. In the second phase, 87 districts will be covered. Census reports will be completed in two months.
Coordination and vigilance committees had been set up at the census district level to monitor the process and ensure accuracy of data collection.
In the first phase, the census will be carried out in Punjab’s 16 districts, eights of Sindh, 14 of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 15 of Balochistan and five districts each of Azad Jamu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB).
The census team will be comprised an enumerator and one army personnel. Police and Rangers will provide security to the team. Each enumerator will have to cover two blocks.
According to the PBS, one CNIC of a family is mandatory to prove their identity. The enumerator will spend 14 days in each block, for which three days will be assigned for house listing operation and filing form A, in which area name, building serial number, building type, household serial number, head of the family’s name, CNIC and economic activities of the household are listed.
The next 10 days will be assigned for the filing of form 2. This form will include questions such as names of all the people in the household, their relation with the head of family, gender, age, marital status, religion, nationality, literacy, occupation during the last 12 months, nature of residence, drinking water source, etc.
One day is assigned for enlisting of homeless people in each block. This is the first time in history that transgender persons and Bedouins will be counted in the country’s population census.
