PESHAWAR:Special measures have been taken to ensure coverage of transgenders community in the ongoing Seventh Population Census in the country, making the highly marginalized segment of society eligible for benefiting from welfare oriented policies launched by the government.
“In the ongoing first ever digital census in the country, three categories have been mentioned in gender section including male, female and transgender,” informs Shaukat Ali Khan, Deputy Director General Population Census Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Talking to reporter here on Tuesday, Shaukat informed that the enumeration teams are visiting every nook and corner of the country for registration of people and were also directed to go to `Deras’ (collective staying facility of transgenders) for their coverage.
The government, Shaukat continued, has also relaxed the condition of identity cards and transgenders would be registered on the assurance of `Gurus’, mentors in transgender community.
He said majority of transgenders does not posses identity card and their identity would be verified from Gurus, head of the Deras.
It merits mention here that in the Sixth Population and Housing Census held in year 2017 ,the total population of transgender community is registered as 10,418.
Whereas transgender rights activists claim that the number of community members is much more than the registered one and lots of them have been missed due to lack of identity documents with them.
Due to the non-inclusion of transgenders in NADRA data, a serious issue of their vaccination against Covid-19 also arise and many were missed, they added.
Deputy Director General, Shaukat Ali also informed that 14000 teams are working in KP for registration of people in the new census.
Almost all the enumerator has been selected locally who have been assigned blocks consisting of 250 to 300 houses.
“Due to local enumerators it is also hoped that majority of the transgenders would be registered because people in their own locality know each others and it will be easy to identify people from this community by team members, he added.
He said the first phase of Houses Listing has been completed and now enumeration is in progress and will continue till April 4, next.
The census teams are recording names digitally and would provide Geo Tag to head of each family to check details of his family.