Census bureau suggests limiting army’s role

Troops' shortage may force authorities to ask military for supervision only

ISLAMABAD:

To cope with the unavailability of required soldiers, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has come up with a proposal to limit the military’s role to only supervising the upcoming census, pending approval of the finance minister.

A three-day deadline Finance Minister Ishaq Dar gave to the bureau for preparing an alternative plan to cope with the availability of only 100,000 troops against the required 375,000 ended on Tuesday.

While the bureau has prepared some recommendations days before a meeting of the Council of Common Interests (CCI) on census, fresh details suggest the department is not fully prepared to hold the population count.

With the adequate number of troops for census unavailable, the PBS has proposed limiting the army’s role to supervision alone, sources told The Express Tribune.

According to the CCI’s decision of March 18, 2015, the military would perform the tasks of supervision, monitoring and maintaining law and order. Two military personnel – one for security and the other for maintaining record – would accompany every enumerator.

The new PBS proposal, the sources said, suggests the military may only perform the role of sudden field checks to ensure transparency and accuracy. However, the proposal has yet to be vetted by the finance minister, who could not spare time on Tuesday due to his meetings with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and other official engagements.

According to another suggestion, instead of completing the exercise in 18 days, the population census may be completed in about two months, by giving one enumerator up to four blocks instead of one.

In its earlier meetings, the PBS had proposed that, like India, the distribution of resources and delimitation of constituencies should be delinked from census to address the issue of political sensitivities, the sources said. However, Dar did not agree to it.

The PBS, they added, may not propose postponing the census and will prefer this decision is taken by the political leadership. However, the bureau’s ill-preparedness may further complicate the situation as the provinces remain divided over the timing of the census. While Sindh wants it to be done on schedule, Balochistan wants it to be postponed. The post of provincial census commissioner in Balochistan is still vacant.

Other provincial commissioners complained on Tuesday they had not been given financial and administrative autonomy to complete the exercise in an efficient way, the sources said, and blamed Chief Census Commissioner Asif Bajwa for centralised decision making.

Bajwa, a retired bureaucrat, has come under severe criticism lately with Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah alleging he was “biased”. The sources said Dar was also not happy with Bajwa and grilled him in the last meeting held on Saturday for not coming up with a credible alternative plan.

Despite repeated attempts, Bajwa was not available for comments.

The chief census commissioner has also not organised the training of all 167,000 enumerators, although the master trainers and the trainers have been trained. A PBS official said the training was postponed to save money as the census was still uncertain.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 24^th, 2016.