Suspected militants 'kidnapped' three government school teachers in Balochistan's Awaran district Tuesday evening, a security official told DawnNews.

Levis official Muhammad Jan told DawnNews via telephone that the 'militants' allegedly abducted the three teachers as they were returning from a training session facilitated by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics for the upcoming national census in Awaran's Giskhor area.

Read more: Who's afraid of the census?

Jan identified the abducted teachers as Rashid Ali, Elahi Bakhsh and Rasool Bakhsh. The men are part of a team in the district that will collect data for the census.

The Levies launched a search operation in the area to recover the teachers but were unsuccessful, the official said.

There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the 'abduction'.

Also read: Population census 2017: Why this extensive exercise will be defective

Pakistan will launch its first population census after a lull of 19 years across the country on March 15.

Some 200,000 army personnel and 91,000 civilian enumerators will accompany the census teams in the provinces, at a cost of over Rs14 billion to the national exchequer.