Population census: ANP demands deployment of female officials in Fata

The Awami National Party (ANP) here on Sunday demanded the deployment of lady officials for holding population census in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) due to the sensitive nature of local culture.
Addressing a public gathering in Peshawar, ANP Central General Secretary Mian Iftikhar Hussain said that the tribal areas culture and traditions prohibit women from speaking to the non-relative men in the absence of the family male members. He demanded deployment of lady officials for population census in tribal areas. He also demanded increase in the number of lady officials for the rural areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to carry out the population census exercise.
Mian Iftikhar Hussain condemned the federal government for excluding overseas Pakistanis from population census and said that the exclusion of overseas Pakistanis would badly affect Pashtoons' population. He expressed grave concern over the non-registration of millions of overseas Pakistanis in the ongoing census. He pointed out a number of blunders in the process, especially on neglect of overseas Pakistanis. It was urged federal government to ensure registration of all expatriates otherwise KP's growing population will be recorded less than that of 1998.
"A conspiracy is being hatched against Pashtoons as majority of them had over ten children while in the census form only six can be registered," he said. In the ongoing process, he said the population of this province would be alarmingly under estimated. The population, he said had a very high weight-age in the distribution of resources in the National Finance Commission (NFC) award and provincial finance commission which had serious implications for some of the poor and smaller districts.
Besides, the blocked CNICs, he asked when National Database Regulatory Authority (NADRA) has blocked thousands of the identity cards, then how the identity of the head of the households would be verified. He added that there were apprehensions in the public that the confidentiality of the census data on the part of Pakistan Bureau of Statistic (PBS) might needs to underestimate of the population of the province, saying data needs to be shared with the province before its finalization in Islamabad. He, therefore, stressed for enumeration of the overseas Pakistani Pashtoons in the ongoing census.