Daily Times

HYDERABAD: Sindhi Association of North America (SANA) has observed coming census process as fraud, totally rigged against native people of Sindh adding that possession of National Identity Card (NIC) as requirement to register in census is oxymoron that defied common sense. Addressing news conference here Tuesday Iqbal Tareen, member of SANA’s census action group said if possession of NIC was must then why would we need census? Nadra alone should serve as Master Database. He said rules and practices of Nadra are user-unfriendly and cumbersome when it comes to large population of Sindhi people living in far flung rural villages making them logistically impossible to access Nadra centers. On the other hand, he added, millions of foreigners were encouraged to settle in big cities of Sindh and issued NICs. He said in 1988 census Karachi alone came closer to population with rest of province. He said adding insult to injury inclusion of dozens of other spoken languages in census as national identities were aimed to dilute status of Sindhi language. He deplored that there was no sense of mobilization on party of PPP or Sindh government adding that there seems no visible ground game by Sindh government or PPP to ensure that a fair process of census is conducted in Sindh. They are not bothered that 30 to 40 % in Sindh do not possess NICs. What were they doing during 5 years in center and 9 years rule in Sindh. In such circumstances SANA is doing its best to be engaged in creating awareness and facilitating people to secure their NICs, he added. SANA offers its assistance to people of Sindh for “every person counts and everyone should be counted.”