Qaumi Awami Tehreek president Ayaz Latif Palijo has termed selection of only six urban districts for extension in census deadline ‘discriminatory’ saying it reflects policymakers’ bias towards rural Sindh where aborigines reside for centuries.
Palijo said in a letter addressed to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Federal Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal on Tuesday that the selective extension was a mean attempt to divide people of Sindh. The days of ‘divide and rule’ were gone and entire Sindh stood united against such injustice, he said.
He called for complete scrapping of the census exercise since it was based on discrimination and was part of an anti-Sindh plan to undercount actual population of the province in general and in rural areas in particular.
He urged the premier and the federal minister to scrap ongoing census exercise since it was based on dishonesty and discrimination and reminded them that although international norms and the country’s constitution required that census be held every 10 years but this one was being conducted only after five years under the influence of some ethnic groups.
He said that people of Sindh would not remain silent if injustice was meted out to the province. The QAT and other political parties of Sindh had been warning since January this year that they would reject the census results if their reservations were not addressed, he said.
He said that a 12 member-advisory committee formed to finalise a working paper for holding of census exercise did not have a single demographer from Sindh. The census, he said, was a subject that fell under the purview of Council of Common Interests (CCI) but all decisions on its conduct were taken by a coterie of anti-Sindh individuals, who had made Census 2017 and 2023 controversial and unacceptable, he said.
Palijo said that highly inaccurate and moth-eaten block maps were fed into tablets used in the much trumpeted digital census and thousands of villages of Sukkur, Larkana, Mirpurkhas, Benazirbad and Hyderabad divisions and over 20 million people living in riverine areas, Kohistan, Thar, Nara, Achro Thar, coastal belt and Kachho were left out of the count.
He said that it was a shame that even British colonial rulers who used only pencils and paper in their census had not done such injustice to Sindh as the technologically advanced federal government had done. Other countries completed counting within a single day while this census was lingering on for two months, he said.
He said that Rs35bn spent on this exercise had gone down the drain because not only the methodology but the very intent was foul. Therefore, he said, no extension in census date could undo the damage done to Sindh.
Govt urged to take back hike in life-saving drugs’ prices
Palijo demanded in a statement issued here on Tuesday immediate withdrawal of recent raise in the prices of life-saving drugs and said it was tantamount to depriving the poor of their right to life.
He said that rulers were in fact making death cheaper than life. The insensitive government did not have anything for labourers, peasants and the poor and their life did not matter to them because they saw people as only their ‘voting machines’.
He said that privileged class easily proceeded to London, Dubai and America for treatment and that was why public healthcare sector had been left in a shambles.
The government must put an end to anti-people steps and take back raise in the prices of life-saving drugs, he said.
He said that on the one hand people did not have quality healthcare facilities while on the other medicines’ prices were being raised, which were already pretty beyond their reach.
He said that healthcare facilities, if any, were available only to rulers, capitalists, jagirdars and the affluent, leaving only a faulty, malfunctioning health system for the poor.
He said that PML-N, PPP, JUI-F and MQM would not be allowed to play with integrity of Sindh through digital census. These parties might do anything for their lust for power but they should leave Sindh alone, he said, adding real change could be brought about with change in system and not change of faces.
Palijo said that rich, capitalists, rulers and jagirdars had handed over the country to international imperialist forces for their petty gains. Pakistan faced a crisis and it required a national government to settle down things, he said. (Dawn)
