SIALKOT, Feb 22: The UNHCR and Pakistan government will begin the 10-day census of Afghans in the district on Wednesday (today) to determine the actual number of such people who had been coming here over the past 25 years.

According to a UNHCR press release issued here on Tuesday, for the UN Refugee Agency-supported census in the district, some 2,000 government employees, in teams comprising one man and one woman each, will record all Afghans, who have been arriving in the district since Dec 1, 1979.

The census was announced last month after a meeting held in Islamabad between Sardar Yar Mohammad Rind, Minister for States and Frontier Regions, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers.

The press release added that the $750,000 census, financed by UNHCR, besides providing reliable information on the number of Afghans in the district, would also record details about the year of their arrival, their origin, their present residences, current means of livelihood and their views on repatriation.

Participation in the census is mandatory for all Afghans who came here since Dec 1979, at the time of Soviet invasion. Those who would not get registered, would be excluded from a proposed subsequent registration designed to provide some sort of individual documents to the Afghans, the release said.

At present, according to the government estimates, about three million Afghans live in the country, while the UNHCR estimates that about a million live just in refugee camps. The teams will visit areas surveyed over the past two months in a "mapping exercise" that identified the residences of Afghans in all four provinces.

The government's Population Census Organization (PCO) will conduct the census, while the UNHCR teams which have been monitoring the process so far, will be in the field during the actual census taking to ensure the agreed procedures are followed.

The data collected will be entered into a database and the first results should be available for detailed analysis about the middle of March. The information is essential for developing policies for those Afghans who will remain in Pakistan after the current tripartite agreement between the UNHCR and the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan expires in March 2006. Under that agreement, the UNHCR has assisted repatriation of nearly 2.3 million Afghans since 2002. The census will continue till March 4.