Master Trainers To Train Enumerators From Feb 6

ISLAMABAD, Feb 1 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 01st Feb, 2017 ) : Chief Statistician and Chief Census Commissioner Asif Bajwa Wednesday said Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) was all set to begin the exercise of 6th population census from March 15 as the bureau had already trained master trainers to provide training to census staff from February 6.

Addressing a press conference, he said the PBS trainers had already been providing training to army personnel at 22 places for conducting smooth census exercise. As many as 84,000 enumerators would be engaged in collecting the data from about 168,120 census blocks across the country, he said.

He said in addition to enumerators, ten percent reserve staff and supervisors had been enrolled for the exercise, hence it would bring the total staff for census to 118,000 persons. Regarding security arrangements, he said Pakistan Army would provide security for conducting the nationwide exercise, adding one Army Jawan would be engaged with each enumerator to ensure smooth and secure data collection exercise.

He said the census would be conducted in phases and the bureau had already made phase-wise distribution of all the geographical areas to conduct the exercise. Bajwa said the March 18 has been set as reference day and whosoever would be present in the country on the day would be included in the census.

He said a person, who lived in a particular place from six months on the reference day, would be registered from that place.

He said overseas Pakistanis, living abroad for more than six months would not be included in the exercise while all the foreigners living in Pakistan for six months on reference day would be included in the exercise.

He said all the persons, whether they had national identity cards or not, would be included in the exercise, adding the bureau had introduced a category in the census forms to identify Pakistanis and foreigners.

He said the bureau already held a meeting with NADRA's authorities, which had blocked about 100,000 fake national identity cards and the checking credibility of 300,000 other cards was in process.

To a question, he said the identification of sensitive areas was the subject of district administration and army. Bajwa said for the first time in the history of country, the transgender community would be included in the national population census.

He said first census was conducted in 1951, followed by second census in 1961 then in 1972 and after that in 1981, while the last census was conducted in 1998. He said there was no constitutional obligation to conduct census after every ten years, however, he added it had been international practice to do so.

He said holding population census was imperative as the funds distributed through divisible pool and jobs quota in various public sectors were set on the basis of population.