Pakistan’s Much-awaited Census Begins Today

 Pakistan will hold its sixth population census from today after a long gap of 19 years. 118,918 trained personnel, as well as 200,000 military enumerators, will be conducting the numeration exercise. The enumerators are trained by the government and the military respectively.

Minister of State for Information Marriyum Aurangzeb shared this information at a press conference alongside Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor and Chief Census Commissioner Asif Bajwa.

Transgenders will be counted

For the first time, transsexual people will be counted separately, according to the community representatives in Pakistan.

Those surveyed will have three numeric choices for their gender: 1 for men, 2 for women, 3 for those who declare themselves transsexuals.

Rs. 18.5 Billion will be spent

The minister said that Rs. 18.5 billion had been allocated for the census. It will be held in two phases over a period of 2 months.

6 months in Jail for providing wrong Information

DG ISPR warned that lying or providing wrong information would land you into jail for 6 months with a fine of Rs. 50,000.

Military Personnel will be linked with NADRA

DG ISPR added that each enumerator will be accompanied by a soldier. The soldiers will be linked with National Database and Registration Authority for verifying information that the people provide.

He noted that the 1998 census was used as an example while preparing for the upcoming census. At that the process took 90 days and employed 250,000 enumerators. This time around the process will take 60 days with 200,000 military personnel.

The first phase will start from March 15 and will continue till mid-April this year, and will cover more than 60 districts of Pakistan. These include 16 district of Punjab, eight districts of Sindh, including Karachi division, 13 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhuwa, Orakzai Agency from FATA, 15 district of Balochistan, including Quetta, five districts of Azad Jammu & Kashmir and five districts of Gilgit Baltistan.

The second phase will begin after a gap of 10 days on 25 April and end on May 25 this year. Around 90 districts in the country will be covered, including the Federal Capital, Rawalpindi as well as 20 districts of Punjab, 21 districts of Sindh, 13 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhuwa, six agencies of FATA, 17 districts of Balochistan , five districts of Azad Jammu & Kashmir and five districts of Gilgit Baltistan.

For easier and better administration, the PBS has divided these districts into blocks, circles and charges.

Each block in urban and rural areas will comprise 200 to 300 houses, while a census circle will have five to seven blocks. Charges will consist of five to seven census circles.

According to these administrative divisions, there are more than 168,000 blocks, 21,000 circles and 3,000 charges.