Committee constituted to probe ‘undercounting’ in Karachi, other cities

Islamabad_Federal Minister for Planning Development & Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal  directed to constitute Committee consisting of Secretary Planning, Syed Zafar Ali Shah, Provincial Chief Secretaries and Chief Census Commissioner, Dr Naeem uz Zafar to devise a mechanism and to look into the matter of undercount in big cities and suggest a way forward to resolve the issue to assure 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. The meeting was attended by the 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.
Planning Minister Iqbal directed PBS to constitute Committee comprising of Secretary Planning, Syed Zafar Ali Shah, Provincial Chief Secretaries and Chief Census Commissioner, Dr Naeem uz Zafar to devise a mechanism to look into the matter of undercount in big cities and suggest a way forward to resolve the issue to assure a transparent and credible Census Field Operation. He further directed to call the Census Monitoring Committee to discuss further deliberation in order to complete the deadline. During the meeting the Minister also directed SPARCO to conduct the geo- tagging to identify the count of missing slums.
Earlier, Chief Census Commissioner briefly explained the achieved targets, highlighted the problematic areas (i.e., under coverage in big cities, high rise buildings and Slum areas and explained that 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 concerns and this claim can be easily verified. He requested provincial functionaries to be more vigilant to resolve this administrative issue.

Meanwhile,

After concerns raised by some political parties that Karachi’s population was counted incorrectly, Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives said that a committee was formed to look into ‘undercounting’ in major cities.

According to a statement issued by the planning ministry, the committee will devise a plan and suggest a way to resolve the issue to assure a transparent and credible census field operation.

Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal constituted the committee comprising Secretary Planning Syed Zafar Ali Shah, Chief Census Commissioner Dr Naeem uz Zafar and provincial chief secretaries.

The steps were taken during a meeting to review progress of the ongoing digital census. Reportedly, after completion of 95 percent counting, Karachi’s population was shown to be lower than reported in 2017 census. According to the latest data, city’s population is around 13.9 million.

As per 2017 census, Karachi’s population was 16 million, a figure not agreed by all political parties. The planning minister also directed the Census Monitoring Committee to discuss how to complete the process within the deadline.

He also directed Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (Suparco) to conduct geo-tagging to count the population of ‘missing’ slums.

Among others, the meeting was attended by Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Syed Aminul Haque, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) chief census commissioner, secretary planning, National Database and Registration Authority director and National Telecom Corporation managing director.

The participants were informed about the targets achieved so far and issues of undercounting in big cities and high-rise buildings and slum areas. Chief census commissioner briefed the participants of the committee that the Burea had appointed teams to trace gaps in low coverage areas in order to find out the real issue behind.

The participants were informed that major reason for ‘low coverage’ was undercounting by field staff. He asked the provincial officials to be more vigilant to resolve the issue.