Pakistan: Census staff miss counting residents in 30,000 high-rise Karachi buildings
PBS is reevaluating the census process in the provincial capital amid widespread concerns
Karachi: The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has identified over 30,000 high-rise residential buildings in Karachi where the census process is being reassessed after it emerged that the enumerators didn’t count its residents.
The PBS under the ongoing 7th digital population and housing census has been counting the residents in a total of over 1.9 million buildings in Karachi.
The PBS is reevaluating the census process in the provincial capital amid widespread concerns expressed by the concerned political leaders that the latest census process would again fail to properly count the population of Karachi.
At a recent meeting, Sindh Governor, Kamran Khan Tessori, while acknowledging that valid reservations existed about the census process, told the PBS officials that he and his family members were yet to be counted by the enumerators.
At a press conference, Former Karachi mayor and senior leader of Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM), Syed Mustafa Kamal, told journalists that owing to proofs presented by the MQM the PBS had duly identified over 30,000 buildings whose residents were yet to be counted by the enumerators.
He said that there were 860 census blocks in Karachi where the census staff had enumerated only one occupant in each of its houses.
He disclosed that as per the data shared by the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) with MQM leader and Federal Minister for Maritime Affairs, Faisal Sabzwari, there were a total of over 19 million adult residents in Karachi possessing Computerised National Identity Cards and children having age less than 18 registered with the NADRA.
He said there were over 3.4 million properly metered electricity connections in Karachi while millions of other residents of the city used an irregular electricity connection.
He said that PBS wouldn’t get any chance to undercount the population of Karachi this time due to valid data and proofs gathered by the MQM that had also been timely shared with all the relevant federal authorities.