Ahsan Iqbal says ‘some miscreants want to sabotage census’

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Planning Development & Special Initiatives Professor Ahsan Iqbal on Tuesday said all resources were being provided by the federal government to complete the census as it was a national agenda.

The next general election would be based on the census, but some miscreants wanted to sabotage the process, he said while chairing a meeting of the 7th Census Monitoring Committee to review the progress of the country’s first Digital Census.

The meeting was attended by Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, chief secretaries of Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, the National Database Registration Authority chairman, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) chairman and other representatives, according to the state news agency.

Ahsan Iqbal said, “It is our responsibility to focus on this exercise by ensuring its transparency and accuracy.” The Federal Government would make the whole process successful by taking all the stakeholders on board.

READ: FIRST DIGITAL CENSUS: GOVT EXTENDS DATE FOR SELF-ENUMERATION

Ahsan Iqbal directed the PBS chief to meet the Sindh chief minister along with his technical team on Wednesday to address the concerns of the province. Chief Minister Murad appreciated the efforts of the planning minister.

The minister said the government would take all the provinces on board regarding the census and the concerns of Sindh province would be removed immediately.

He said the government believed in taking all decisions by consensus. “The digital census will have an impact on the future of Pakistan and I cannot afford any kind of controversy and will not compromise on its transparency.”

Chief Statistics Dr Naeem Zafar briefed the meeting on the activities related to the census.

It was decided that the Census Monitoring Committee would meet every week for better coordination and to resolve all the problems immediately.

It may be mentioned that the minister had already given a deadline of April 30, 2023, to complete the census as after the exercise the ECP would take four months for delimitation.