KARACHI: Despite the assurance given by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan on Monday alleged that enumerators were counting multi-storey buildings having dozens of apartments as one unit.

Speaking at a press conference at the party’s temporary headquarters in Bahadurabad, former Karachi mayor and senior MQM-P leader Mustafa Kamal said that this deliberate action would result in showing less population than the actual headcount of Karachi.

He said the huge exercise, which was being carried out on its demand within a short span of five years to the previous census, would not reflect the actual number of people in Karachi.

“A drama is going on in the name of digital census as buildings having dozens of flats housing hundreds of people are being counted as a single unit in Karachi,” he said, adding: “It will impact the entire scope of this exercise and result in a gross undercount of Karachi’s population and eventually the metropolis will be deprived of its due share again.”

He also criticised former prime minister Imran Khan for pushing the country into a crisis for his vested political interests as the current economic crisis was actually the fallout of his bad governance between 2018 and 2022.

Former mayor Kamal terms digital census in Karachi drama

The MQM-P leader also questioned the performance of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government in Sindh and warned that the ruling party would have to answer for consuming over Rs1.4 trillion in the name of Karachi development.

“The PPP like the past has again started warning the coalition government [to part ways] after seeing the prospect of general elections. But it would have to answer questions about spending Rs1,400 billion on so-called development projects in Karachi,” added Mr Kamal.

Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2023