KARACHI: Pakistan Peoples’ Party Senator Taj Haider expressing concern over digital census said that his party’s central election cell has received disturbing reports about undercount of population from sources located in different provinces.

He said that Initial computations in province reveal that damage done to province of Sindh as result of so-called ‘Digital Census’ is far bigger than what was initially feared and warned against when we now look at population figures published in Gazette notification of August 7, 2023”, communique said.

Sindh, which remains destination of economic migrants from other provinces, Gilgit Baltistan and Azad Kashmir besides large number of illegal migrants, has been allotted an average family size (AFS) of mere 5.64. Punjab has an average family size of 6.43, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 6.94 and Baluchistan 6.42.

He noted that reduction of just one person in average family size results in reduction of 18 to 20 percent in total population of Sindh. He said there were only four districts in Sindh, two of them urban in Karachi where average family size is above six where rest of it in rural Sindh have less than that. Senator Taj Haider said reports were alarming received from  provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that even when no enumeration had been carried out in remote and sensitive areas of both provinces notified population figures of various districts were significantly less than ones that had been readily available in digital census.

Published in The Daily National Courier, August, 23 2023

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