PESHAWAR: The population count criterion adopted for carving out village/neighbourhood councils in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is not reliable and may compromise the provincial government`s objective to determine the people`s needs at the village level.

According to senior development planners and the local government experts, several of the newly created village/neighbourhood councils are believed to be overpopulated, more than the population size fixed for these councils under the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Local Government Act, 2013.

`The provincial government does not have any option but to rely on thepopulation figure based on the census conducted in 1998,` said a senior government functionary.

This has compromised the provincial government`s ongoing village/neighbourhood councils` delimitation process, conceded official circles concerned.

As per the LGA 2013, each village/neighbourhood council would entail not more than 10,000 people.

However, according to informed officials, the local government and rural development department has no other option to determine population of the village/neighbourhood councils except for relying on the estimated population figures.

`Some villages might have total population in excess of the estimated figure whereas a few might also have undergone decrease in the number of people living there,` conceded a LG&RDD official.

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf led provincial government has decided to thin out the third tier of the local government, giving up the previously en-forced third tier of local government, i.e. the Union Councils.

The province had a total of 992 union councils prior to the enactment of the new law.

Under the new arrangement, the province is set to have more than 3200 village councils with each one of them containing population from 2000 to 10,000 individuals. A village/neighbourhood council would consist of two or more villages.

The provincial delimitation authority, an extension of the LG&RDD, said an official, used the record of the provincial revenue department for creating village/neighbourhood councils.

According to an official, moza(s) [a land revenue unit] as reflected in the revenue department`s record have been taken without affecting their existing composition for the purpose of forming village councils. Resultantly, if a moza consists of more than one village, they (the villages) would be used as a single entity for the establishment of village/neighbourhood council concerned.

However, for determining the population of a village council, the only reliable data available dates back to 1998 when the last census was held.

`We can`t do much (about the absence of exact population figures), this is something that haunts the entire country,` said a local government department official.

The official said that the land record did not mention population of mozas/villages.

For that, the delimitation authority, added the official, relied on the figure of the 1998 census, which was later updated in 2011 by applying estimated population growth rate.Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, according to a development planner, had a total population of 17.74 million people in 1998, making 13.4 per cent of the total national population of 132 million. In 2011, the national population figure was 177.1 million, whereas Khyber Pakhtunkhwa`s population was 25.34 million, making 14.3 per cent of the national population.

According the provincial government`s development planners, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is believed to have more population than the estimates prepared in 2011. This became evident, said an official, from the re-cent events of natural calamities and the terrorism related incidents that forced millions of people to migrate from their villages, taking refuge in camps set up for internally displaced persons.

A large number of IDPs in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, added the official, made their national identity cards for the first time in an attempt to fulfill official requirement for availing relief and rehabilitation assistance.

`The number of new ID cards made in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is one good evidence of substantiating the claim that our population is higher than the estimated figure of 25.34 million,` said the planner.

The unavailability of the exact population figure, said the planner, would undermine the PTI-led provincial government`s endeavour to improve development planning by determining people`s needs at the village level.

`Since nobody knows the exact population of any of the villages and therefore, the objective to determine people`s actual needs would be compromised,` said the planner.

The electoral rolls, said another official, updated by the Election Commission of Pakistan could not be used either to determine the population of village because these rolls reflect the names and ID numbers of individuals eligible for casting votes.