Finance Minister chairs briefing session on Population & Housing Census

Islamabad: June 29, 2017: Finance Minister, Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar here on Thursday chaired a briefing session on the recently held Population and Housing Census 2017.

Chief Statistician, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS)/Chief Census Commissioner, Asif Bajwa informed that the field operation of the 6^th population Census concluded on 24^th May 2017. During the process, 151 districts of all the four provinces, Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Gilgit Baltistan and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) were covered. The Census was conducted in two phases and during the process 63 districts were covered in first phase while 88 districts were covered in second phase. The first phase started on 15^thMarch and ended on April 13 while the second phase of the census exercise was initiated on April 25 which concluded on 24^th May.

Asif Bajwa added that services of 119,000 enumerators and supervisory staff were utilized in collecting data from about 168,540 census blocks throughout the country. In addition to civilian field staff, 200,000 army personnel were engaged as enumerators as well as to provide security to the census teams. He said that all the census related record and material has been safely retrieved under the supervision of Armed Forces Personnel. Its sorting and stacking has also been completed, he added.

The Chief Statistician/Chief Census Commissioner assured the Finance Minister that the provisional Census results would be made available as per the timeline given i.e. by end of July, 2017.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said it was heartening to note that international independent observers, who visited different places and interacted with people during the process, had termed population census exercise as satisfactory. Further, the whole process was conducted in accordance with the given timelines. He was also appreciative of the fact that barring a few incidents, the process remained peaceful. He said the credit for smooth conduct of the Population & Housing Census goes to the whole PBS team, the Armed Forces personnel, the Provincial Governments and security Agencies throughout the country. The overwhelming participation and support by the general public and their interest in the whole process was highly encouraging. The Finance Minister said that the last Census was conducted in 1998 by the PML-N government and it was after a gap of almost two decades that the 6^th census is being conducted, again by the PML-N government.

Finance Minister called upon PBS officials to compile the results within the given time line as the data would prove highly beneficial for better economic planning and development.