ISLAMABAD: The announcement of the 6th housing and population census preliminary results has been delayed due to the prevailing political situation in the country, which were scheduled to be made public in the last week of July.
“We are ready to present the results at an appropriate forum, however owing to the ongoing political situation the process was delayed,” a top official of Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) said.
The PBS was scheduled to announce the preliminary results of the census in the last week of July, however after the July 28 decision of Supreme Court and consequent non-existence of chief executive of the country and his cabinet, the presentation of the results at appropriate forum was affected, the official said.
He said that the PBS has compiled the provisional results and was ready for presentation, expressing the hope that after the assumption of power by the finance minister and convening of the meeting of Council of Common Interests (CCI) the results would be presented.
It is pertinent to mention that the sixth housing and population census, which was carried out after the gap of 19 years, was conducted in 151 districts of the four provinces, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
The last census was conducted in 1998 by the PML-N government and it was after a gap of almost two decades that the sixth census is being conducted, again by the PML-N government.
The first phase of the 6th census ended on April 15, while the second phase was completed on May 25. The government spent Rs 18.5 billion on the census, of which Rs 6 billion was spent on army personnel and a similar amount on the PBS staff. The remaining Rs 6.5 billion was spent on providing transportation.
It may be recalled that the first census in the country was conducted in 1951, the second in 1961, the third in 1972 instead of 1971, due to political turmoil, and the fourth census was conducted in 1981.
The fifth census, which was due in 1991, was conducted in March 1998 with army’s help. Under the constitution, the government is supposed to conduct the census after every 10 years.