SAHIWAL: A disabled woman was burned alive at her home in Farid Ganj late on Sunday. A bullet wound in her head was also found, according to city police, but only a postmortem examination would reveal if Anwar Bibi was shot before or after she was burned.

The police declared it a targeted killing, but the motive has yet to be determined. On the complaint of her brother Muhammad Riaz, police launched a murder investigation against unknown individuals.

When neighbours discovered the house on fire and called Rescue 1122; the woman with hearing and speech impairments was alone at home. The body was taken to the Sahiwal Teaching Hospital for an autopsy by police.

DIGITAL CENSUS: All is set for the seventh population and household census, the first-ever digital census, in the Sahiwal division. Sahiwal division has been divided into 6,372 census blocks.

Umer Farooq, divisional coordinator, informed Dawn 3,572 enumerators along with 500 reserves will conduct the digital census from Jan 7 to 22. The process would be done in tehsils Arifwala, Pakpattan, Sahiwal, Chichawatni, Renala Khurd, Depalpur and Okara.

Dawn learnt a divisional coordination committee meeting at commissioner’s office discussed the plan.

The meeting was attended by representatives from the district government, Statistics Bureau Office, Local Government and Community Development, RPO and DPO offices, Education Department, and Pakistan Army. Training of enumerators will be held at tehsil headquarters. The training would be given by 60 master trainers.

Umer said that to ensure transparency and accuracy of the population census, multimedia data collection models will be used to be monitored by the National Census Coordination Centre. There would be real-time updates from the centre to enumerators with end-to-end encrypted technology.

Dawn learnt district heads will coordinate with village lumberdars to oversee the ground situation and also for the safety of enumerators. Enumerators are hired from public schools.

Published in Dawn, january 3th, 2023