95% of Karachi house count done, claims govt
Around 95 per cent of Karachi’s house listing and 60 per cent of its family registration process has been done, said the government in a handout from the Sindh Information Department on Wednesday.
Work started on April 5, about nine days ago.
Work has been completed in Jamshed Town, whose DDO was appreciated for getting the census done before the deadline. Sindh Census Commissioner Noor Muhammad Leghari told the media on Wednesday that they could extend the April 19 deadline if there are mistakes. He said that the government would not accept the results of areas where political interference was witnessed. There have been reports of political influence.
The deadline might be pushed back if DCOs felt that was required and they would suggest this at the upcoming meeting with the Sindh chief secretary on April 15.
“The provincial government would then request the centre,” Leghari told the media on Tuesday, after a meeting with Census Assistant Commissioner Asif Saleem, Hyderabad DCO Hyderabad Aftab Ahmed Khatri, all DDOs of the revenue department and officials of the education department to review the housing census in Hyderabad.
According to Laghari, all complaints of political interference in the census were being reported by the media and not the census staff. He informed that the staff would have to number a house even if it was omitted from the maps and blocks delimited earlier. Action would be taken against officials who are making up data or refusing to count particular residences. Those found guilty might be slapped with a fine or even sent to jail. However, complaints received so far were mostly technical and seem to have no political underpinnings.
There were complaints of teams arriving late or recording data with pencils but most of them were not very serious.
He rebuffed allegations of deliberate exclusion of houses in the count. The listing is still going on, he said, so it’s too early for this kind of criticism. Laghari said that the flood survivors living in relief camps had not been counted yet.
Meanwhile, Hyderabad’s share from the provincial census budget of Rs160 million was Rs8.4 million. “The money has not been released yet,” he said.
Laghari directed the revenue DDOs, who are acting as district census officers, to attend to complaints without waiting.
The census was discussed at a provincial coordination committee meeting supervised by the chief secretary.
Meanwhile, the chief minister held a video-conference meeting with all DCOs to discuss the census among other matters. However, after the government’s announcement that the house-count is nearly complete, several nationalist parties rejected the claims.
Within a few hours, the nationalist parties issued statements in which they accused the census workers of irregularities and demanded the government impose a curfew in the neighbourhood during the counting.
Meanwhile, Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon has issued orders to officials to start an advertisement campaign to guide the people and ensure a flawless house-count. All houses, government and non-government buildings, worship places and even huts are being numbered separately.
He clarified that national identity cards are not mandatory for the house-count. He also asked his secretary to make sure the telephone and fax numbers of all complaint centres are working.
with additional input from PPI
Published in The Express Tribune, April 14th, 2011.
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