Govt committee casts doubt on census conduct

Panel objects to unrestricted military access to data


Shahbaz Rana June 04, 2018
PHOTO: AFP /FILE

ISLAMABAD: A government-constituted committee has found serious lapses in conducting the 6th population census by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, recommending the authorities concerned to get the final results validated from demographers before their release.

The Technical and Audit Evaluation Committee has also recommended fixing responsibility against the authorities concerned of the PBS for committing glaring lapses, an official report of the committee seen by The Express Tribune shows.

Former chief statistician Asif Bajwa, who was also the Chief Census Commissioner, headed the PBS for five-and-half years and was responsible for the whole exercise.

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The committee findings may carry far-reaching implications for the whole exercise. The outgoing government had already decided to withhold the final results due to similar objections by the provinces.

The findings showed that the enumerators inferred or directed responses on questions relating to ethnicity and religion that may raise serious questions over the new ethnicity data that showed significant increase in Pashtun and Baloch population, and reduction in Urdu and Punjabi speaking people.

“This was against the basic principles and procedures of the Census Operation,” the committee noted.

The findings showed that the PBS mostly used untrained people for the census exercise.

The committee observed deviations from the laid down procedures at all the three stages of the Population and Housing Census 2017: preparatory and planning stage, census field operation and post-enumeration activities.

The Ministry of Statistics secretary had constituted the team comprising two committees, namely Supervisory Expert Group and Technical Evaluation/Audit Committee, to evaluate all aspects of the census and highlight the weaknesses for possible remedies.

PBS spokesman Atteequr Rehman confirmed that the Statistics secretary had commissioned the report aimed at knowing about the achievements and lapses in the largest headcount exercise. He said the report was being examined internally.

The evaluation team held meetings with the staff engaged in census work as well as with provincial stakeholders, including heads of provincial technical committees.

The meetings were held between December 2017 and February 2018.

The census was conducted between March and May 2017 and its final results were presented before the Council of Common Interests last week which the CCI did not approve due to objections by the provinces.

The government had constituted a census subcommittee of the governing council of the PBS in January last year to make sure the exercise was done in a transparent and credible manner.

“Formulation of the subcommittee was just a formality as none of their recommendations were followed in letter and spirit” by the BPS, according to one of the main findings of the committee.

“The PBS authorities had adopted whatever they liked and rejected that was not according to their sweet will,” shows the report.

The committee observed lack of coordination among national bodies, non-compliance of recommendations given by national and international agencies and acute shortage of expert staff that left the PBS with a number of loopholes.

The PBS also committed breach of confidentiality, breach of principles of uniqueness and universality in conducting the exercise.

“The final result of the 6th Population and Housing Census, 2017, need to be verified by a committee of eminent demographers and experts, before its final release,” recommends the committee.

The committee also objected to the PBS’s decision not to include pre- and post-enumeration surveys in its plan.

“Since there is no error-free census, there is need to consider post-enumeration survey as part of the census programme at the planning stage,” it observed.

“Recommendation regarding launching of post enumeration survey (PES) was shot down by the responsible authorities of the PBS,” according to the report.

Preparatory stage evaluation

“The accuracy of a census, to a large extent, depends on proper delimitation of census areas, especially circles and blocks,” observes the committee.

It finds that the update and digitisation of rural/urban area maps was the mandate and responsibility of GIS/Geography Wing of the PBS.

“But Geography/GIS officers were not involved in the process of update work of both the Urban and Rural Area Frame and Maps due to which a number of issues and problems arose during the census 2017.”

No pilot exercise regarding update work was carried out that was necessary to check mistakes and shortcomings before actual start of the census exercise.

Even the GIS maps were not fully prepared for the creation of the enumeration blocks. Overlapping or gaps had been reported by the provinces during the census operation, 2017.

During census, Pakistan Army pointed out during meetings that hand-drawn block maps were not accurate, and the now election commission is also complaining about poor quality of those maps, according to the committee’s findings.

“This position was a setback to the census operation and needs to be looked into and investigated in detail,” it recommended to the authorities.

In yet another glaring finding, the committee noted that despite imparting training on the staff by the PBS and UN agencies, “in actual situation, mostly untrained and raw staff had been utilised”.

During the update process, the Quick Count Record (QCR) information collected both for urban and rural areas were extremely faulty.

“The main reason behind the faulty and substandard QCR was that teams involved in this activity made only random checking and entered information in the QCR by guessing the estimated average number of household members,” according to the findings.

Moreover, control rooms were mainly regulated by lower class officials and no proper record, in this connection, had been maintained by the PBS, to ensure authenticity and credibility of the census operation.

Evaluation of Census Field Operation

Undertaking small but thorough pilot census on perhaps 800 blocks (0.5% block), before the main census, was strongly recommended by various national and international agencies. “But this has not been done by the PBS,” according to the report.

Population was supposed to be counted at usual place of residence, known as the de-jure method.

However, the PBS applied the hybrid approach, using both the de-jure methodology and the de-facto method.

In de facto method people living their current locations were also counted. This could lead to double counting of individuals.

The committee also objected to giving unrestricted access to the military to the census data.

Pakistan army used a special form (Form-786) to collect every kind of data.

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“The questions included in Form-786 indicated that it appeared to be a parallel,” observed the committee.

According to some documents provided by the PBS, three copies of the summary form that was used to collect the data were prepared against the requirement of two.

The third one was handed over to army personnel, according to the report.

Also, the census data has been given to UN agencies, compromising privacy of individuals.

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