ISLAMABAD: Senators of Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) at a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Finance on Monday expressed scepticism about transparency in the upcoming census.

They said that if manipulated, the results of the census could lead to serious divisions among the federating units.

The committee was informed that Pakistan was among four countries of the world where a census had not been held over the past 20 years. The other three countries are Somalia, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

While briefing the committee, Prof Mehtab Karim, an expert on demographic studies and member of the Expert Committee at the Federal Bureau of Statistics, said names of five to six million people from Sindh were found missing in the 1998 census.

“We analysed the data of the 1998 census results in every household in Sindh which showed a decline only in Sindh from seven persons per house in the 1981 census to 5.8 persons in 1998, but it showed increase in the rest of the provinces,” he said.

He also highlighted that the last census had revealed that more than one million people had migrated to Sindh, mainly to Karachi, between 1994 and 1998, but this section of the internal migration had been eradicated in the 2017 census.

Based on the analysis of various previous censuses, he disclosed that the population of Punjab had been declining steadily, while that of Sindh was on the rise.

“While there is no question about transparency, conducting census is essential for every county,” the expert said.

Senator Mir Kabir highlighted the woes faced by various Baloch clans and said the census would present faulty results if conducted in the present environment.

He claimed that between 700,000 and 900,000 people had migrated mainly to Karachi from six districts of Balochistan due to the law and order situation and said they should be counted in their home districts.

Senators belonging to the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party alleged that plots were being hatched to show a reduced Pak­htun population in Balochis­tan and increased Baloch population.

Senator Sardar Mohammad Azam Khan and Usman Khan said faulty results would usurp the rights of Pakhtuns in the provinces and suggested that key players conducting the census should be neutral — neither Baloch nor Pakhtun.

Senator Saeed Ghani, Nihal Hashmi, Saleh Shah and Sehar Kamran also expressed concern over the census procedure.

Chief Statistician Asif Bajwa informed the committee that in order to make the census exercise more transparent two forms would be filed, one by a census officer and the other by the army’s soldier accompanying him, and if both forms reported contradictory figures, an inquiry would be conducted to ascertain the actual figures in the disputed forms.

He said that surveys of migration, disability, fertility and unemployment would be conducted after the completion of the census.

Published in Dawn, February 28th, 2017