Considering the deteriorating law and order and operational constraints, like limited availability of qualified and trained human resource, the launch of sixth Pakistan Population and Housing Census 2011, scheduled for September, is likely to be delayed for a few months, an official source said.
He said the army’s reluctance to assist with the census had out the exercise in jeopardy. Population Census Organisation (PCO), an attached department of Statistics Division, is supposed to carry out the census in Pakistan and during the last census, which was carried out 1998, PCO had completed the census in collaboration with the army. It was planned that the sixth census would be conducted across the country in two stages, House Listing Operation from April 5-19, 2011 and Population and Housing Census in August and September 2011.
A senior official of PCO said that the organisation was already behind its schedule, as it was still in process of training the staff to take part in the census process. In the current law and order scenario, conducting a census without the help of army personnel on ground was a Herculean task for the government, he said. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani had the authority to take the final decision to launch the population census, which was to utilise 0.225 million recruits for completing the exercise within 16 days, an official source said.
