ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Thursday called upon Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) Officials to compile the results of the recently held Population and Housing Census within the given time line as the data would prove highly beneficial for better economic planning and development.
While presiding over a briefing session on the Population and Housing Census 2017, the minister said that it was heartening to note that international independent observers, who visited different places and interacted with people during the process, had termed population census exercise as satisfactory.
Ishaq Dar said that further, the whole process was conducted in accordance with the given timelines. He was also appreciative of the fact that barring a few incidents, the process remained peaceful.
The finance minister said the credit for smooth conduct of the Population & Housing Census goes to the whole PBS team, the armed forces personnel, the provincial governments and security agencies throughout the Country.
The minister said that the overwhelming participation and support by the general public and their interest in the whole process was highly encouraging.
Dar said that the last Census was conducted in 1998 by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government and it was after a gap of almost two decades that the 6th census is being conducted again by the PML-N government.
Meanwhile, the Chief Statistician PBS and Chief Census Commissioner Asif Bajwa informed that the field operation of the 6th population Census concluded on May 24, 2017.
The Chief Census Commissioner told that during the process, 151 districts of all the four provinces, Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Gilgit Baltistan and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) were covered.
Asif Bajwa said that the Census was conducted in two phases and during the process 63 districts were covered in first phase while 88 districts were covered in second phase. He said that the first phase started on March 15 and ended on April 13 while the second phase of the census exercise was initiated on April 25 which concluded on May 24.
Moreover, he said that services of 119,000 enumerators and supervisory staff were utilized in collecting data from about 168,540 census blocks throughout the Country. He said that in addition to civilian field staff, 200,000 army personnel were engaged as enumerators as well as to provide security to the census teams.
The Chief Census Commissioner said that all the census related record and material has been safely retrieved under the supervision of armed forces personnel. He said that its sorting and stacking has also been completed.
The Chief Statistician/Chief Census Commissioner assured the finance minister that the provisional Census results would be made available as per the timeline given i.e. by end of July 2017.
