LAHORE, Aug 30: The first phase of the Livestock census in the country will begin from Thursday (tomorrow), it is learnt. Livestock moves to the desert for grazing after summer rains from Cholistan area in the Punjab, Tharparkar and all adjoining districts in Sindh.
The enumeration work of the first phase in 20 districts will be completed by the end of October, officials told Dawn on Tuesday.
The two-month census field operation (enumeration) will be carried out in Bahawalnagar, Bahawalpur, Rahim Yar Khan, Kasur, Okara, Sahiwal, Pakpattan, Khanewal, Vehari and Lodhran in the Punjab and Tharparkar, Umerkot, Mirpurkhas, Badin, Thatta, Tando Allah Yar, Sanghar, Nawab Shah, Noushehro Feroz and Khairpur in Sindh.
The field operation in other parts of the country will be completed by the end of July next by the Agriculture Census Organization (ACO) of the Statistics Division of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, officials said.
“Primarily, the census covers the head count of commercially important livestock — buffaloes, sheep and goats — by sex, breed and age group besides the head count of horses, mules, donkeys and camels by sex and age groups.
“Two separate surveys on milk production and the number of animals slaughtered will be conducted simultaneously with the census,” officials said.
The officers of the ACO would attend district meetings with the officers of provincial livestock departments to make arrangements for field operation of the census.
This would follow training of the functionaries of the provincial livestock and dairy development departments who would perform their duties as enumerators as well as supervisors of census field operation.
A two-stage sample design has been adopted wherein mouzas will be selected in the first stage and the households in the second stage. Very large livestock holders called National Certainty Holdings (NCH) will be listed throughout the country and enumerated separately without sampling.
The Cholistan area in the Punjab and Tharparkar district of Sindh has been planned to be enumerated on 100 per cent basis due to livestock concentration in these areas.
In rural settled areas, mouzas have been selected with probability proportional to the number of households, according to 1998 Population Census. For 12 big urban cities like Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi etc, the urban blocks have been grouped into four categories depending on the density of livestock population and a stratified sample of blocks has been drawn while all the households of the selected blocks will be enumerated.
In small urban and unsettled areas, systematic sampling technique has been used to select blocks and villages separately from each district. The Mouza Certainly Holdings (MCH) in the selected mouzas and urban blocks will be enumerated without sampling while the remaining households from selected mouzas or small urban blocks will be selected systematically.
The total number of selected mouzas are 14 per cent of the total mouzas while urban blocks are six per cent of the total blocks. It is expected that around one million households will be enumerated throughout Pakistan.—Zaheer Mahmood Siddiqui