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This Wednesday begins the phase of the door-to-door count of Pakistanis, who have launched a self-registration system to obtain a more complete x-ray of the composition of the country today.
By Varoon P. Anand, RFI Regional Correspondent
The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (OEP) started the seventh population and housing census process on February 20, 2023, with the option to add details digitally through a government website. More than 4 million people visited the portal during the first week. The self-declaration option will end on March 3, 2023, while door-to-door enumeration starts today.
While speaking at a press conference in Islamabad, OEP official spokesman Muhammad Sarwar Gondal shared that “Pakistan is making history with the first digital census and Pakistan Bureau of Statistics shares with great pride that people are actively participating.”
The optional self-registration will be followed from today by a collection of details until April 1 by more than 120,000 enumerators using tablets and mobile phones, which organizers say will make the process more accurate, transparent and credible. Electoral seats in Pakistan’s parliament, as well as funding for basic services such as schools and hospitals, are allocated using population density data.
Transgender people were first counted in the 2017 census, which identified just 10,418 transgender people out of a population of nearly 208 million, later counted at more than 21,000, a gross underestimate of the size of the community, activists said. . Officials say the new digital exercise will make it easier to detect and correct anomalies. “The digital census will ensure the transparency and participation of the provinces thus paving the way for credible results,” said Ahsan Iqbal, Minister of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives who oversees the census. He added: “For a month, 126,000 pollsters in green jackets will count everyone in Pakistan, on the border or inside, via secure tablets.”
OEP chief statistician Naeem-uz-Zafar stated: “Provinces will get disaggregated information on gender, employment and migration, among other indicators. Therefore, it will be an effective tool for planning socio-economic activity because it will clearly show the picture of access and deprivation. It will be a radical change that will enable many people, including the homeless, temporary workers and nomads.”
However, nationalist parties have threatened to launch protests against the digital census. Members of political parties in Pakistan’s Sindh province have referred to the digital census as unconstitutional, illegal and anti-Sindh. Over Rs 50 billion has been budgeted for the digital census without third party supervision, raising fears of corruption.
