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HYDERABAD, April 4: House-listing operation under Census 2011 will begin on Tuesday in Sindh in the absence of the provincial census commissioner and amid fears by nationalist circles that a large number of people still displaced after the floods would be omitted from the count.
The process will continue till April 19 followed by population census in September-October.
Sindh has been divided into 23 administrative districts with 129 census districts. Only computerised NIC will be accepted.
This is the sixth census in the country and 2011 is said to be global census year because different countries take up this exercise. The last census was conducted in 1998.
In the first phase only houses or buildings will be counted. Enumerators will register name of the head of each household.
Logistics are being provided to enumerators in Sindh who were trained last month. Every taluka, town and cantonment board is to be treated as census district and the deputy district officer concerned will act like the census district officer.
In Sindh, Noor Ahmed Leghari has been nominated as census commissioner but his nomination has not been notified by federal government’s establishment division yet.
“He has not assumed his office,” said Farooq Ahmed, Sindh’s joint census commissioner, expressing hope that he would be taking over soon.
Hyderabad-based nationalist parties have been raising fears as to registration of displaced families affected by floods because they have no abodes right and either they stay in relief camps or roadsides settlements which are not officially recognised as relief camps.
A demand has been made by Census Monitoring Committee convener Jalal Mehmood Shah that household/population census in areas having concentration of illegal immigrants or influx of population from upcountry should be supervised or monitored by the army.
According to him, those who are staying in Sindh to earn their livelihood should be given a separate category so that their number is separately reflected, according to him. He referred to people who are working in coal mines in Lakhra and industrial areas of Nooriabad.
He is worried about count of illegal immigrants like Afghans, Burmese and Bengalis. “If they are to be legalised, they will become citizens of Pakistan and demand rights to vote and in that case their representatives - who will be foreigners by all means - will be got elected by them,” he said.
He demanded education employees of each taluka should be engaged for enumeration. “Only they can count people genuinely and people from other areas will not be able to do that,” he said. He pointed out that the government would have to extend time for housing-listing census because the number of staff engaged in it was small and population had increased manifold in urban and rural areas.
Each enumerator has been given two to three blocks and each block has 175 to 200 houses in rural areas and 200 to 225 in urban areas.
“As many teachers are not engaged and we are worried about how each house will be covered. The number of staff has to be increased,” Jalal Mehmood Shah said.
Awami Tehreek president Ayaz Latif Palejo has appealed to all those Sindh-friendly people to treat the census a friendly contest between themselves to ensure count of each individual because real population would affect resources and budgetary allocations for Sindh.
“All residents of Sindh should keep their lingual and ethnic considerations aside and ensure an actual count of Sindh’s population,” he said.
However, he asked: “How those who have lost their houses in floods would be counted?” He also pointed out people like gypsies who are always on the move and their enumeration is a big problem.
“Will census staff be enumerating a hut made of thatched straw? How will those be counted?” he asked.
He said PPP ministers for their political scoring converged in Islamabad wearing Sindhi caps to express their concern over the removal of Deedar Hussain Shah as National Accountability chief, but they did not bother to launch an awareness campaign about the census in their constituencies.
He said that a notification for the appointment of the provincial census commissioner should have taken place in February or March.
He said that enumerators must be careful about illegal immigrants’ enumeration because they had CNICs but they should be registered in separate column.
Secretary-general of Sindh Taraqqi Pasand Party Dr Rajab Memon apprehended bureaucratic hurdles in the whole exercise because officials were not ready to address concerns being addressed by nationalist parties.
He particularly referred to Thatta district where he said that the EDO (revenue) was not listening to complaints of nationalist activists. “Even staff is not properly trained as to different codes that are to be properly taken care of,” he said.
