Nation urged to participate in census

“It is critical for everyone to partici­pate in the census by co-operating with the enumerators through answering questions correctly and accurately since the census will cover everyone who will be in Zimbabwe on the census night, that is the night of August 17 and 18.

“Zimstat is urging everyone in spite of social, political, religious, economic background to participate in the census for population census data will guide policy makers for effective policy, plan­ning and decision making purposes and this will improve the lives of all Zimbabweans,” said Zimbabwe Statisti­cal Agency director general Mr Mutasa Dzinotizei.

Census data is used to create devel­opment programmes at province, dis­trict and ward level, which will benefit the current and future generations.
Information gathered will help with planning for the construction of schools, clinics and hospitals among other social needs. Mr Dzinotizei said they will use latest data capturing technologies during the census.

“For the first time Zimbabwe is going to use the scanning technology for data entry and with assistance from the donor community Zimstat managed to purchase three heavy duty scanners.”

He said the first batch of 2012 census questionnaire have been delivered to Zimstat. Mr Dzinotizei said the Gov­ernment was financing the census alongside donors.
“The Government has so far allo­cated US$22 million out of US$37,2 million needed for the successful cover­ing of the 2012 population census and efforts are still being made to close the financing gap from Government and development partners.

“UNFPA and other development partners have chipped in with financial and material support as the census is a costly exercise which needs a lot of resources,” he said.
The census field mapping exercise is the major pre-enumeration activity that Zimstat has been carrying out since May 2010 and constitutes the crucial phrase of the 2012 census operation.

The objective of the mapping exer­cise is to divide the country into enu­meration areas on the basis of the coun­try’s administrative divisions and the 2002 EA maps, in order to produce updated EA and supervision area maps.

The maps will be used in assigning work to enumerators and supervisors and in controlling for the coverage of the census enumeration.
The theme for the 2012 population census is “be sure to be counted.”