Citizens to be counted where they live, says PBS official.

KARACHI -- With over 60 per cent of the job done in Sindh, an official from the Pakistan Bureau of StatisAtics (PBS) made it clear on Saturday that 'persons will be counted in the area or city where they live and whose resources they use, regardless of [the place] where their identity card is based'.

Teams carrying out the first-ever digital census have so far counted over 31 million people in the province, of which 8.5m are living in Karachi alone.

The fresh numbers were shared by Chief Census Commissioner Dr NaeeAmuz Zafar during an interaction with media on Saturday.

Mr Zafar clarified a 'few myths' about the gigantic task going on simultaneously across the country. Though he would not share any specifics, he did say that PBS had faced some hurdles in the initial days of the exercise when it was launched more than a month ago.

He maintained that the provincial administration had been given access to 'digital census monitoring dashboards', as per their demand.

'We have some 9.7m listed households,' he said, while referring to a presentation made at the PBS office showing the data gathered so far. 'More than 6.1m [households] have already been enumerated and process for the remaining is underway. So far, we have counted 31.39m people in Sindh. And in this huge exercise, we have not only counted people or gathered data which we used to collect during the past censuses but also everything which relates to socio-economy.'

The presentation referred to by the chief census commissioner suggests that among the 31.39m people counted in Sindh so far, 16.4m are males, 14.98m females and 1,496 transgender persons.

When asked about the population of Karachi counted so far, he cited the current data showing 8.5m people living in the metropolis.

In reply to a question about the reservations of Sindh government about the digital census and assurances given by Prime Minister...