Declined: Centre snubs Sindh's demand for provision of census details

PBS Chief says law will have to be amended for disclosing such details

 

 

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), a federal entity, has turned down the Sindh government’s demand for the provision of details about the census results, which the province believes are inaccurate.

The demand was turned down by PBS Chief Statistician Asif Bajwa, Express News reported.

Giving an explanation for the move, Bajwa said Sindh had sought details of Form 2 and census blocks but the law did not allow the PSB to share this information.

He added that the law would have to be amended for disclosing such details.

The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the ruling party in Sindh, as well as other parties in the province had rejected the results describing them as a conspiracy hatched by the federal government to show that population of Sindh was less than what it actually was.

They claimed that 47.9 million population of the province was underreported by at least 10 million. The 47.9 million population is 17.2 million or 57 per cent higher than 19 years ago.



Provincial minister Nisar Khuhro had said “this aims at reducing Sindh’s share in the National Finance Commission as well as national and provincial assembly seats and job quota in federal government services”.

He added that the census figures would negatively affect Sindh’s share in water distribution, natural resources and divisible pool.

Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah said last month that he had expressed reservations on the census results when they were presented in the Council of Common Interest meeting.

“I had expressed my reservation over the results, in which the population of Lahore was shown to have increased from five million to 11 million, while the population of Karachi was shown to have increased from 10 million to 14 million,” Shah said, adding that the results were quite surprising to him.



The chief minister said he had written a letter to Federal Minister Ishaq Dar when the census process was being started, urging Dar to direct the census teams to give a copy of the headcount to the family concerned during the census data collection process. “It was necessary and important to make the process transparent and easier for verification but the federal government did not listen,” he claimed.
Blocks were made during the census of a group of 250 to 300 houses, said Shah.

“Had they [the census teams] given the households a copy of their headcount, it would have become quite easy to counter-check the population in a block through the copies available with them,” he said.

The federal government had rejected the allegations that it understated Sindh’s population and said that provisional national headcount figure of 207.74 million had been announced after reconciling the data compiled by both civilians and military personnel.