Pakistan’s total population reaches 234 million as census deadline extended

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has once again extended fieldwork of the first-ever digital census for five more days till April 20 as the country’s total population reached 234 million, ARY News reported on Saturday.

In a statement, the PBS spokesperson said that Pakistan’s total population has reached 234 million (23.4 crores), increasing by 8.06 percent as compared to 2017.

The spokesperson noted that the country’s population swelled by 10.71 million as compared to the statistics of 2017.

According to the bureau’s spokesperson, 100 percent census work has been completed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Kashmir, 99 percent in Punjab, 98 percent in Sindh, 90 percent in Islamabad and 82 percent in Balochistan.

Meanwhile, Federal Minister Ahsan Iqbal chaired the eleventh meeting of Census Monitoring Committee today to review the progress of field operation of digital census and other allied matters.

Chief Census Commissioner, Dr Naeem uz Zafar presented the progress of the census operation. He apprised the forum that out of 156 districts, 100 percent work has been completed in 122 districts while over 90% work has been completed in remaining districts.

Overall, 230 million population has been enumerated and 40 million households have been geo-tagged. Zafar apprised that the 5-day extension proved to be very successful, enumerating an additional 5 million people in 80 thousand households.

It was also informed that after conducting an in-depth analysis to identify the reason behind undercount, teams of officers from PBS Headquarter are facilitating DCS and ACS by visiting big cities like Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore, Faisalabad and Peshawar etc. to ensure complete coverage of all structures/houses and leftover structures.

As a result of this exercise significant increase has been seen in population and no of households.

During the meeting, Ahsan Iqbal lauded the efforts that have been made on ground to detect the causes of undercount then working that has been done to improve the population specially after extension.

He said that completion of 122 districts is a clear indication that the exercise is going to be completed with success. He monitored the progress of all provinces and asked them to indicate if further extension is required. “The operation must be concluded with mutual consensus and with the assurance that no controversy should left behind,” he said.

On the other hand, IT Minsiter Ameen ul Haq appreciated the work done by PBS team and all stakeholders for conduct of this National exercise and identifying the abnormalities timely for rectification of the same to avoid any controversy on results of the national gigantic exercise and ownership of process.

He proposed to extend the census operations till 20th April, 2023 in big cities for complete coverage.

Keeping in view the recommendations of provinces, the Field operation of 7th Population and housing Census has been extended till 20th April, 2023 by Census Monitoring Committee to ensure complete coverage.