Pakistan’s first digital census to kick off on March 1

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s first-ever digital population and housing census will kick off across the country from Wednesday [March 1], ARY News reported on Monday.

Briefing the journalists, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) spokesperson Muhammad Sarwar Gondal noted that a portal has already been launched by the bureau so that people can submit their data themselves and don’t need to face the botheration of giving data to census teams visiting door-to-door.

He said more than 4 million people have already been registered at the portal and a UTN number will be issued to them after their data is saved and they can give that number to the census team.

The spokesperson further said that 121,000 field enumerators have been deployed for the field operation of census, which will begin on Wednesday. “The process will be completed by April 1 and the data will be released by April 30 which will then be approved by the Council of Common Interests (CCI),” he added.

He added that this will be the evidence-based authentic data as per international standards which will be used for constituency delimitation in next general elections as well as for public policy planning.

The spokesperson said the census teams will be monitored by geo-mapping and geo-tagging data of SUPARCO and administration officials of respective provinces, divisions, districts and tehsils where census teams are carrying out enumeration, will be given access to the dashboard of that specific area.

Elucidating this, he said Chief Secretaries of provinces will have access across the province, similarly, Commissioners will have access to Divisions, Deputy Commissioners to districts and Assistant Commissioners to tehsils.

The spokesperson said to avoid any hacking or failure of online system we have separated the process from the internet and have converted it into our own intranet server. He said we have already done a security audit of the dashboards.

However, to ensure the smooth running of census field operation there will also be an alternate manual system if any problem occurs in online system in any area.

The spokesperson said security arrangements have also been made for the census staff and police and army personnel will be deployed keeping in view the sensitivity of the area.

He said special SOPs have been devised for enumeration in flood-affected areas of the country where many people are not yet settled into their homes.