ISLAMABAD, Jan 10: The government is considering to freeze resource distribution under the federal divisible pool and job quotas on the basis of 1998 population census to depoliticise the process of the sixth headcount and house listing because Karachi and Hyderabad depict unusually higher population growth of up to six per cent.

A proposal to freeze the population results of 1998 census has officially been submitted to the prime minister and the Council of Common Interests (CCI) by the Population Census Organisation and Statistics Division for a decision at the next meeting, the government informed the National Assembly`s Standing Committee on Economic Affairs andStatistics on Tuesday.

Statistics Secretary Sohail Ahmed said India had frozen resource distribution on the basis of 1971 census and was able to depoliticise the population census.

Chief Census Commissioner Habibullah Khattak told the meeting that there was a tendency in some quarters to show higher population because job quotas and resources sharing were determined on the basis of population.

The information was volunteered by the officials when MNA Nafisa Shah asked how exaggeration of population figures could be discouraged and depoliticised.

`We have already proposed to the prime minister and the chief ministers not to change quota allocation and resource distribution on the basis of freshpopulation census,` said Mr Khattak, adding that the population census would stand depoliticised if resource distribution is not changed on its basis. Ms Shah also wanted to know if the population census was stalled owing to an initial analysis shared with the government.

Although there was no direct answer to her question but Mr Khattak said his organisation had shared preliminary analysis of house listing operation completed on May 5, 2011, with the CCI and the prime minister.

He said the analysis suggested three to six per cent growth in population and house count, particularly in Karachi and Hyderabad.

On the other hand, substantially lower coverage of house count was reported in Punjab and normal growth in KhyberPakhtunkhwa.

He said the population growth was a natural phenomenon but the trend in Karachi and Hyderabad was over and above the normal growth analysed on the basis of five previous censuses.

In Balochistan, the Baloch belt showed lower growth as enumerators could not go to many areas because of lack of support from law-enforcement agencies while the Pakhtun belt showed much higher results as in many cases two familles were listed against one house.He said that the results were not made public because these were to be verified on ground.

The statistics secretary said the CCI had decided in November 2010 to complete the house listing operation by April 2011 and conduct population and housingcensus by Sept 2011.He said the first phase of house listing was completed by May 5, 2011, and all preparations had been put in place to conduct housing and population census in September, including appointment of 192,000 enumerators and thousands of supervisory staff, printing of material and training of staff. Even funds were released to the chief secretary.

However, when the approval was sought from the CCI on August 27, 2011, to complete the main phase of population census in September-October, the prime minister `desired to have another meeting with chief ministers on the issue outside the purview of the CCI,` Sohail Ahmed said, adding that the meeting did not take place despite repeated reminders.

Some members questioned the engagement of a large number of teach-ers in the population census saying this would affect education but were told by the census commissioner that only teaching and revenue departments contained a large workforce.

Mr Khattak said 100 per cent accuracy of population count was perhaps not possible but his organisation could trace extraordinary dip or exaggeration in headcount on the basis of global information systems (GIS) and Google maps, instead of fun dependence on revenue department officials.

Meanwhile, the Population Census Organisation has written to the ministry of defence to depute FC personnel and Rangers to provide security to enumerators and other staff of the population organisation in areas where law and order situation was unsatisfactory.