ISLAMABAD, May 6: The Population Census Organisation (PCO) is gearing up to hold a population and housing census in 2008 and is likely to declare rural localities with 10,000 or more population as ‘urban’ for enumeration purposes, besides involving a third party for credibility checks, it is learnt.

The PCO is currently exchanging its preliminary plans, based on evaluation reports of past censuses, with stakeholders and all organisations who contributed in the previous census held in 1998. The Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) in collaboration with PCO and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has so far produced 18 evaluation reports based on the 1998 census.

If approved by the government, female enumerators are likely to be hired after proper training for probing techniques is given to them that would help in countering the drawbacks of the last census pertaining to misreporting in age related data about women.

PIDE has recommended to the government that “the 2008 population census should be based on urban and rural classification”, adding that the devolution plan has removed the urban-rural divide but ground realities are different. It proposed that the use of administrative definition for ‘urban areas’ should be continued in the 2008 census but by combining it with a size-specific criterion.

This would mean that adjacent areas of major cities may be declared urban by redefining their boundaries in collaboration with the Tehsil Municipal Administration (TMA) apart from all metropolitan corporations, municipal/town committees or cantonments at the time of devolution in 2001. In addition, all rural localities with 10,000 or more population in 1998 may be declared urban since most such rural towns have urban characteristics.

Studies have found out that the published 1998 census data on Children-Ever-Born (CEB) was defective and infant-mortality rate was under-enumerated to the tune of 30-50 per cent when derived from the census data. Hence, it has been proposed that data on more demographic variables be collected with the addition of two new columns in the census form to estimate properly the maternal mortality rate using the time of death approach.

During discussions it was also determined that information on overseas migration by country of destination was missing from the 1998 census even though it used to be a part of previous censuses. It has, therefore, been proposed that information on overseas emigration should be recorded in the 2008 census.

PIDE has suggested that the housing census should be conducted at the time of listing a house and information on sewage and solid waste disposal, provision of piped natural gas in urban and rural areas, questions like heating of housing units, availability of hot water and piped gas in housing units should also be added in the next census. All these questions were missing in 1998 census although some of them were included in the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) survey. Also, questions regarding watching TV and listening radio are likely to be replaced with access to mobile phones.

To improve the census results, it has been proposed to focus especially on recruitment of field staff and their training.