PHILLIMON MHLANGA IN GWERU AND SAMUEL NJINGA IN MASVINGO
Government through its statistics agency, ZIMSTATS has intensified preparations for the country’s first digital census scheduled for next month.
The data will inform the country’s policy direction.
This year’s national census, which will be the 5th census since independence, will take place from April 21 to 30,2022. Zimbabwe last held its census in 2012. The country’s population was 13 061 239. This reflected a 10.9% increase from the previous census which had been held in 2002.
For the first time, Zimbabwe will be conducting a census in April as previously censuses were held in August.
This year’s exercise will also be unique as the census will be carried out using tablets known as Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) instead of paper and pen which was used over the years .
The data collection from CAPI will be sent to the central server for further processing.
Consequently, results are expected to be released within six months. In previous censuses, results were released after close to two years.
Minister of State for Midlands Larry Mavima said government was geared up for a once-in-a decade population and housing census.
Speaking at the official opening of the on-going 2022 population and housing census level 2 supervisors training workshop at the Midlands State University in Gweru, Mavima encouraged citizens to take part in the exercise, meant to inform government policies.
The training in Gweru is the second in series of training sessions that started in March in Harare and Bulawayo and will be concluded in April.
“Census is very important to us as a nation, its results informs us in terms of formulation of policies and programmes. As a province and nation as a whole, census results are key in our devolution agenda to inform the equitable sharing of resources and revenues guided by population profiles, poverty profile and infrastructure quality,” Mavima said.
He said devolution funds are distributed to local authorities by a formula which takes into account population as provided by ZIMSTATS.
“Accordingly, our 14 local authorities in the Midlands Province can only be able to assess their fiscal capacities after knowing the total population in their area of jurisdiction.,” Mavima said.
He said President Emmerson Mnangagwa has targeted a cumulative of 220 000 housing units in the National Development Strategy 1.
“In order to achieve our NDS1 thrust of transforming lives through accelerated inclusive and result based economic growth and development, there is need for evidence based planning by making use of census and other surveys data from ZIMSTATS,” Mavima said, urging citizens in the province to “cooperate as usual and be sure to be counted as we always say ‘no one should be left behind”
Also speaking at the official opening of the programme in Masvingo Province, held in Mashava, the Masvingo Minister of State and Devolution Affairs, Ezra Chadzamira said the census would help the government to know how many people are in the province and country and be able to plan and well positioned on which programmes to prioritise.
He applauded the use of technology through digitalisation helps in the fight against the global pandemic which is the Covid-19.
“There is no handling of papers. The information is captured and kept in the database unlike in the previous decades whereby the information risked getting contaminated as it was in the form of papers,” Chadzamira said.
