Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Overseas Pakistanis -who add more than $18 billion annually to the foreign reserves – would be ignored in the sixth national census starting on March 15.

Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) chief Asif Bajwa said this in a monthly media briefing in PBS Headquarters.

According to the government statistics, around 8 million Pakistanis were living abroad with a vast majority of them residing in the Middle East.

The Census Department will observe March 18 as a census reference day as the person not home for the last six months would be registered on a temporary address.

“Every person of the country including the transgender will be counted during upcoming census process whether they are Pakistani national or foreigners,” Bajwa added.

He said, “We have divided the census process into three categories: the officials will count the number of houses in first three days; the next 10 days would be kept for filling the census forms around the country and one day is specifically for counting the homeless people.”

Bajwa added that the country has been divided into 168,120 blocks which include 22,000 in KP, 3,793 in FATA, 38,000 in Sindh, 10,104 in Balochistan, 86,000 in Punjab, 1,303 in Islamabad and 4,023 in Azad Kashmir.

He also said that PBS enumerators will cover two blocks in a systematic way. Bajwa said 785 master trainers have completed their training and they would further train army and civilian officials.

The first census was conducted in 1951, the second in 1961 while the third census was held in 1972 instead of 1971 due to political environment in the country and war with India. The fourth census was held in March 1981 and fifth one was held in March 1998. To a question, he said that the Census Department will also count foreigners living in Balochistan but they will be considered as non-Pakistanis in the census form and additionally after matching the NADRA data, fake CNIC holders will be considered foreigners.

He said the CPI has been reached to 3.85 percent during the first seven month of the current fiscal year.