The first-ever digital population and housing census in the fifth most populated country will start today (Wednesday). The much hyped general elections would be held in constituencies based on the new digital census as a digital portal was launched earlier this month, where over 4 million people had registered themselves.According to detail, 121000 field enumerators and 86,000 security personnel will take part to complete this task.

Spokesperson Pakistan Bureau of Statistics has earlier stated that all major buildings and installations will be geo-tagging, and all stakeholders, including Sindh, have no objection to the procedure. On the base of seventh census results, there will be new constituencies and then general elections.

He said that data would be collected about How many people are in Pakistan and how many houses are in Pakistan? For the first time in the country, the fieldwork will start from to collect data on a digital basis, he further added that Institutional Statistics arrangements have been completed. He said that a portal has already been launched by the Bureau so that people can submit their data themselves and don't need to face the problem of giving data to census teams visiting door-to-door.      

According to PBS, more than 4 million people have already submitted their details online through self-census, which will continue till March 3, including the preparation of the Economic Sons Framework in the digital census. He said this process will be completed by the 1st of April and the data will be released by the 30th of April which will then be approved by the Council of Common Interests.         

The total cost of the seventh census is Rs 34 billion, of which about Rs 7 billion will be spent on security, the preliminary census results will be released on April 30 with the approval of the Commonwealth Council. He added that this will be the evidence-based authentic data as per international standards which will be used for constituency delimitation in the next general elections as well as for public policy planning.        He said this is the 7th census in the country's first-ever digital census not only of Pakistan but also of south Asia. 

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-INP