KARACHI: The MQM-P’s Rabita (Coordination) Committee has pointed out that the census staff had failed to reach several areas.
It announced that if there were errors in the statistics of the ongoing 7th Population and Housing Census in the country, the party would conduct its own head count.
During a huddle of the MQM-P’s Rabita Committee, presided over by the party’s convener Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui, sources said the participants discussed a range of issues including the country’s political situation, census and local government by-elections.The party expressed its grave concerns over the process of the country’s first digital census, observing that its reservations over the exercise were coming true.
The participants of the meeting further maintained that in many areas, several people living in the same building had been counted as a single individual.
Earlier this month, on the MQM-P’s demand, the prime minister had ordered to extend the census from three to 10 days and to mark each flat instead of the main entrance of multi-storied buildings.
In February, the party had written a letter to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) chairman, saying that allocating only three days for conducting the census in the densely-populated Karachi was not enough. The letter had read that at least 10 days should be set aside for household head counts.
