Soldiers walk with an official (L) from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics as they arrive in a residential area to collect information for a census in Lahore on March 15, 2017. PHOTO: AFP
KARACHI: The issue regarding the non-inclusion of differently-abled persons in the ongoing national headcount has been resolved, the federal government informed the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Friday.
During the hearing of a petition against the non-inclusion of differently-abled people in the nationwide data collection drive on Friday, the federal law officer said that the authorities had resolved the matter in light of the directives issued by the Supreme Court as well as the Lahore High Court.
Headed by Justice Munib Akhtar, the bench adjourned the hearing due to the absence of the lawyer representing the non-profit organisations that had moved the court seeking inclusion of differently-abled people in the census.
SC seeks explanation from PBS for ‘neglecting’ persons with disabilities in census
On the last hearing, the federal law officer had told the court that the data of differently-abled persons will be collected after the ongoing national census, on a sample basis, as was done during the last census held in 1998.
Case history
The petition was filed by non-governmental organisations All Pakistan Blind Association and Amity International, which alleged that the enumerators were not collecting details of blind people. According to them, there were around 20 million visually impaired people across the country, of which there were five million in Sindh alone.
The court was pleaded to order the concerned authorities include a separate column in the forms for differently-abled people.
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