GHALANAI: Tribal elders and mediapersons have been urged to sensitise the people to the importance of the census and cooperate with the staff during the second phase of the 6th National Housing and Population Census starting on April 25.

The call was made by political agent Mahmood Alsam Wazir while presiding over a meeting at the agency headquarters, Ghalanai, here on Friday.

He called upon the elders, maliks and journalists to play their role in making the drive a success.

Mr Wazir said that all the resources would be utilised to ensure that all the persons were counted in the exercise. He pointed out in the last census, the population of Mohmand Agency was shown less, which should be rectified in the current drive.

He directed all the assistant political agents to call jirgs in their respective areas and urge the tribesmen to fully participate in the exercise for judicious utilisation of resources for their regions.

It is to mention here that a large number of people of Mohmand are residing in Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Mardan, Lahore and other parts of the country. And, the meeting called for counting all these families in the census process.

“We fear that if the Mohmand tribesmen living in other areas are not counted in the population census, population of the region may be further decreased,” focal person of the census in Mohmand, said on the occasion.

The tribesmen living in other areas were asked to come to their region to be counted in the census.

The political agent urged the tribal elders, line departments and census teams to ensure presence of tribesmen in the local areas at the time of their counting.

POWER OUTAGES: Over 22 hours of power outages in Mohmand tribal region have piled misery n the residents as they have to buy drinking water owing to shortage of the commodity.

Taking advantages of the continuous outages, local wood dealers have also doubled the rates of timber.

The residents told journalists that a dedicated line had been given to the local steel factories at the cost of domestic consumers who suffered prolonged blackouts. The people demanded of KP governor and the political agent to order Tesco to carry out loadshedding under a schedule.

Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2017