The Sindh government is expected to approach the Council of Common Interests (CCI) for the postponement of the upcoming census – scheduled from September 12 to 27 – as the Education Department has stopped training teachers for this purpose due to the holy month of Ramazan.
The provincial authorities have proposed new dates for the census – September 30 to October 14 – stating that the census staff cannot properly trained during Ramazan.
According to sources, the teachers’ training sessions would be arranged after Eid.
Even the prime minister has been informed about this problem through a summary recently floated by the Population Census Organisation.
The prime minister has reportedly approved the summary, but the issue would be placed before the CCI so that the grievances of any province, if any, could be removed.
With a shortage of teachers in the province’s two major cities, the staff of the city district government and revenue officials conducted the housing census in Karachi and Hyderabad.
However, the remaining 21 districts of the Sindh had enough number of teachers to carry out this task, which was held from April 5 to 19.
A total of 20,000 employees, including teachers, revenue and local government staff, performed the house census duties as the province was divided into 35,296 census blocks and 128 census districts. The census block had at least 200 to 250 houses in a block.
The first census was conducted during British rule in 1881 and then consecutively in years 1951, 1961, 1972, 1981, 1998. However, the census could not be conducted in 2008 due to the poor security situation, floods and political complications. The census is essential as it is used to mark constituencies on which the NFC Awards, job quotas and other matters are fixed.
