KARACHI:
Earlier, NADRA announced a comprehensive information technology (IT) solution to carry out the 7th population and household census of Pakistan. The digital census will cover 628 Tehsils comprising approximately 185,000 census blocks. NADRA has conducted several training sessions to prepare enumerators for this endeavour.
Unfortunately though, there have been several issues during the training that may impede enumerators’ ability to gather the data and may lead to inconsistencies. Since the start of the training, trainees were not given their devices and instead asked to imagine a device in their hand whilst the trainer carried out the lecture through a presentation. The trainees do not know what the census form looks like as they were not given a sample form. Many trainees were not given their device user names either. Considering these issues, it is highly likely that many trainees will struggle with the handling of their devices and may not be able to input the data correctly.
Technical issues such as the unavailability of projectors also hampered the training sessions. Many enumerators were unaware that they had been selected for the census and did not attend the sessions until the last few days. Naturally, they cannot be expected to have learned everything within a few hours. Given all these issues, NADRA needs to spend more time training enumerators before embarking on the digital census mission. It must ensure that all enumerators are properly informed and equipped to use their devices. NADRA must address these issues to gather reliable data and avoid a waste of time and resources.
Sumaira Hadi
Karachi
Published in The Express Tribune, January 19th, 2023.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
