Census now in full swing

THE 2022 national population and housing census kicked off in earnest in Manicaland Province on Wednesday night, with truck drivers, those on transit buses, hospital patients, hotel guests and the homeless being among the first people to be counted.

The population and housing census will run up to April 30, 2022.

During the exercise, enumerators will visit all households and institutions across the country asking questions pertaining to social, economic and demographic characteristics of households.

Manicaland, being one of the most densely populated provinces in the country, has a total of 5 462 enumerators, 1 062 team leaders, 106 Information Technology personnel and 21 Level One supervisors to ensure a smooth flow of this important national programme.

On Wednesday, Manicaland joined the rest of the country in embarking on awareness marches.

In Mutare, the march was held in the Central Business District and was led by the Zimbabwe National Army Brass Band. In an interview yesterday (Thursday), Zimbabwe National Statistics (ZimStat) Manicaland provincial statistician, Mr Fidelis Kupara said they did their homework so well and everything is in place to ensure a successful census programme.

“Everything is in place for the population and housing census in Manicaland’s seven districts as well as in the three urban centres of Mutare, Chipinge and Rusape. Enumerators were deployed on time and they hit the ground running.

“Among the first people to be counted were those who were in buses and truck drivers who had parked their vehicles for overnight sleeping. The homeless were also counted.

“We worked closely with law enforcement agents to ensure the safety of our enumerators.

“Patients in hospitals were counted this (yesterday) morning as we did not want to disturb their sleep and resting. We did not encounter any challenges on Wednesday night and Thursday morning,” he said. Mr Kupara added:

“As for hotels, lodges and other accommodation facilities, we did not carry out physical counting, but we availed questionnaires for the guests for them to avail the necessary information that we want.

We could not invade their privacy, hence the use of the questionnaires.”

Holiday Inn Mutare general manager as well as Hospitality Association of Zimbabwe executive member, Mr Charlton Chimbira pledged maximum co-operation.

“Enumerators are yet to visit us, but we assure them of maximum co-operation as this is a very important national programme,” said Mr Chimbira.

Explaining what is meant by the census night, Mr Kupara said:

“The census night also serves as a reference point such that people cannot be counted twice if an enumerator finds them at their home five days after the census night as we will refer to them as having already been counted on the night of April 20. All our enumerators are ready and fully equipped after we trained them and they also had a field practise session.

“Awareness campaigns were rolled out across the province and I think we will not encounter much problems as most people appreciate the importance of this programme.

“We urge citizens to fully cooperate with the enumerators throughout the process to ensure the smooth flow of the process.”

He also called on people to be on the look-out for criminals who might capitalise on the exercise to rob them.

“Our enumerators have ZimStat regalia - either T-shirts or bibs. They also have identification particulars which they can present to people while discharging their duties.

“We also encourage those who have doubts to contact our offices for clarification,” said Mr Kupara.

He said modalities were also put in place to ensure that all refugees at Tongogara Refugee Camp are counted.

“Refugees will be counted for the first time in Zimbabwe as part of the country’s population.

“To ensure a smooth flow of the exercise, we carried out a pilot census exercise at Tongogara Refugee Camp last year where some of the problems like the language barrier were encountered and addressed.

“We want to ensure an all-inclusive exercise and we have enlisted the services of interpreters to help our enumerators to discharge their duties. We want to capture as much accurate data as possible,” said Mr Kupara.