CCI to discuss census security on February 29

As GHQ can only spare 100,000 troops, Dar gives PBS another three days to devise a new strategy

ISLAMABAD:

The government has failed to come up with a credible alternative plan for conducting the much-awaited population census after the military gave its final word that it cannot spare more than 100,000 troops to provide security to the exercise.

Sources said the matter will now be placed before the Council of Common Interests (CCI) which will meet on February 29 after a gap of almost a year.



On Saturday, the ministry of finance and statistics once again could not devise a strategy to cope with the lack of troops which is threatening the largest national exercise, which has been pending since 2008. The last census was conducted in 1998.

It is struggling to come up with a credible plan, as nationalists in Balochistan call for cancelling the census altogether until refugees from Afghanistan are repatriated.

The ministry once again discussed the possibility of conducting the census in phases, an option Finance Minister Ishaq Dar had earlier ruled out. Dar gave the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) yet another deadline on Saturday to revise the plan in light of the availability of only 100,000 troops.

The finance minister, in a February 5 meeting, had directed Chief Census Commissioner Asif Bajwa to get in writing from the General Headquarters how many troops it can spare for the census. Bajwa had already informed the ministry in a previous meeting that the army could only provide 100,000 soldiers for the census and that it would meet only 25% for the exercise’s requirement.

On Saturday, Bajwa once again told Dar that the military would not provide more than 100,000 soldiers for the census, officials said.

Dar, in the February 5 meeting, gave PBS a three-day deadline to come up with an alternative. Even though it has been two weeks since then, the minister on Saturday ended up giving the bureau another three-day deadline to develop a new strategy, the officials told The Express Tribune.

According to them, the PBS will prepare between four to six alternatives and submit them to Dar on Tuesday. The options include holding the census in phases and increasing the responsibilities of enumerators by giving them two to three blocks instead of just one as per the original plan.



There are 167,000 blocks and the PBS had estimated an ideal total troop requirement of 375,000 personnel. Even if one soldier is deployed per block, the number of troops the army is willing to spare would fall short.

At this point, the federal government is not clear whether it will be able to begin the exercise according to schedule. The government plans to begin the census from the end of next month and give preliminary reports before the end of this year. The results will become the base for delimitation of constituencies ahead of the next general elections and for finalisation of the future National Finance Commission awards.

Earlier this month, Finance Minister Dar said a credible census cannot be held without involving the military and that 100,000 soldiers would not be sufficient to conduct the exercise. “We should be conscious of the security requirements … the census can be delayed as there is significant time left before the next general elections,” he said.

Meanwhile on Saturday, Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M) President Sardar Akhtar Mengal urged the government to postpone the census, saying that situation in Balochistan is not favourable for conducting the exercise.

He said thousands of Afghans and other foreign refugees were living in the province illegally and that his party would not accept a census as long as they were present.


Published in The Express Tribune, February 21^st, 2016.