ISLAMABAD: The population of disabled persons across the country has been registered to be less than 0.48 per cent of the total population as per the recently concluded ‘6th Population and Housing Census 2017’
The population of the disabled as per the 5th Population and Housing Census conducted in 1998 was recorded at 2.38 per cent of the total population, indicating that there has been a decline of 80 per cent in the population of disabled persons.
“There are less than a million disabled persons living in the country as per the census data,” a top official of Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) said, indicating that the decision to separately count the disabled was taken very late which could have affected the headcount.
The measure to separately count the disabled was taken after the Supreme Court’s decision to this effect, as was done in case of transgender population.
The PBS officials said that questions were also being raised about the population of transgender people as their headcount was considered to be higher than the population registered in the recent census.
“We registered a person as transgender when he/she declared before census staff to be registered in this particular category. If a transgender did not say to be transgender and wanted to be registered in the male or female category, the census staff would do accordingly,” the official said.
According to reports, the country’s current total population has been recorded at 207.744520 million according to provisional figures of the recently concluded census, showing an average annual growth rate of 2.4 per cent from the calendar year 1998, when the last census was conducted.
According to provisional summary results of the census, which were presented recently in the Council of Common Interests, 132,189,531 people were categorized as rural and 75,584,989 as urban population, which showed 2.23 per cent and 2.7 per cent growth rate over a period of 1998-2017.
The male population of the country stands at 106,449,322 whereas the female portion of the population stands at 101,314,780, while the population of transgender has been recorded at 10,418.
The provisional summary results also show an overall increase in population by 57 per cent over the year 1998, while the population increased by 146.6 per cent since the census of 1981.
