Census: Ahsan Iqbal directs authorities to address ‘undercount’ issue in big cities

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Planning Development and Special Initiatives Professor Ahsan Iqbal on Wednesday directed the constitution of a committee, comprising the Planning Secretary, Provincial Chief Secretaries and Chief Census Commissioner, to devise a mechanism and look into the matter of ‘undercount’ in big cities, ARY News reported.

The body would suggest a way forward to resolve the confronted issues, ensuring a transparent and credible Census Field Operation.

The minister made these directions while chairing a meeting via Zoom to review progress over the ongoing exercise of Census Field Operation, a news release said.

Among others, the meeting was attended by Sindh Chief Minister Sindh Syed Murad Ali Shah, Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Syed Amin Ul Haque, Chief Census Commissioner, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), Dr Naeem uz Zafar, Secretary Planning Commission Syed Zafar Ali Shah, Chairman National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), Managing Director NTC, SPARCO and other stakeholders.

The Planning Minister also directed convening a meeting of the Census Monitoring Committee for necessary deliberation to complete the task within the given timeframe.

READ: MQM-P CONVEYS RESERVATIONS OVER CENSUS TO SINDH GOVERNOR

During the meeting, the minister also directed SPARCO to conduct geo-tagging to identify the count of missing slums.

Earlier, the Chief Census Commissioner briefly explained the achieved targets and highlighted the problematic areas (i.e., under coverage in big cities, high-rise buildings and slum areas. He said the PBS has appointed monitoring teams to find gaps in low-coverage areas to investigate the real issue.

He claimed that a major cause of low coverage is under reporting by the Field Enumerators. “Dashboards have been provided to all concerned and this claim can be easily verified.”

The Chief Census Commissioner requested the provincial functionaries to be more vigilant to resolve this administrative issue.