Urban areas of Sindh: MQM stages walkout from NA against alleged statistics ahead of census

Members of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in National Assembly Thursday protested against alleged discrimination being meted out with the urban areas of Sindh province before the start of census. The MQM members rejected the statistics provided by the government with respect to the number of urban blocks and staged a walkout in protest from the House.
Sajid Ahmad with other MQM members through a calling attention notice raised the issue of census in Sindh, where the number of blocks has been reduced to show the rural population as greater than that of the urban population. MQM members Sajid Ahmad, Abdul Wasim and Fauzia Hameed accused the government of meting out discrimination with the urban areas while deciding the number of blocks for census.
Fauzia Hameed was of the view that the proper mapping of urban and rural areas was also not carried out. Accusing the government of providing wrong statistics in this regard, the MQM members announced to observe a token walkout from the proceedings of the House. Nawab Yousaf Talpur of Pakistan Peoples' Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) said that around 20 percent of rural people had not identity cards, adding the government needed to take notice of the situation to include them in census.
Talking to the newsmen outside the Parliament House, the MQM member Dr Farooq Sattar said there had been 400 percent increase in the rural blocks as compared to the census carried out in 1998, while the urban blocks had been increased only by 100 percent.
Earlier, responding to a calling attention notice moved by Sajid Ahmad about the census and number of blocks in Sindh, Parliamentary Secretary for Finance Rana Muhammad Afzal Khan told the House that the urban blocks were 21,766 in number, while rural blocks are 17,209, showing an increase in number of urban blocks. He said that in Sindh about 56 percent population blocks were situated in urban areas. He said urban blocks had been increased by 18 percent, while raise in the rural blocks was less than two percent. He said the government had no intention to show urban population less than the rural population.
Rana Muhammad Afzal said all the citizens of Pakistan would be included in the upcoming census, adding that nobody would be refused registration for non-availability of Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC). To another calling attention notice moved by Malik Muhammad Aamir Dogar, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmad told the House that 40 percent work on Gojra-Shorkot and Shorkot-Khanewal sections had been completed, adding the Gojra-Shorkot section would be completed by March 31, 2018.