Chronicle Editor
Nqobile Tshili, Chronicle Reporter
THE Zimbabwe National Statistic Agency (Zimstat) is set to conduct a weeklong 2022 Population and Housing Census post mortem survey which will validate census outcomes for release next month.
The country in April conducted a Population and Housing Census which is expected to inform Government policy decisions based on the number of the people in the country as well as their housing infrastructure.
Zimstat from Friday July 22 to Wednesday July 27 will conduct a Post Enumeration Survey and enumerators will be deployed in various parts of the country to capture data from the population.
A total of 153 enumerators have been hired to conduct the critical exercise in comparison to the 50 000 that were recruited for the census.
The country’s census is conducted at 10 year intervals and this year it was held from 21 April to April 30.
The post enumeration survey enumerators are undergoing training at Mkoba Teachers College in Midlands which is ending tomorrow.
Thereafter they are expected to report to their stations and commence the data on Friday.
Zimbabwe adopted the Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) technique system of data collection for the 2022 Population and Housing Census and enumerators used tablets to collect data.
The adoption of the electronic data collection will enable the country to release census results within a few months of completion of the exercise as opposed to the past where preliminary outcomes were released years later.
For instance, while census results are expected next month, the 2012 results were only released in 2014.
Speaking during a Post Enumeration Survey training workshop held at Mkoba Teachers College on Saturday, Zimstat director Mr Taguma Mahonde said the post mortem exercise is always conducted before the release of preliminary census results.
He said the country will be conducting the Post Enumeration Survey for the second time following the first one which was done after the 2012 Population Census.
The country conducted a Housing census for the first time this year which is expected to determine the quality of life lived by citizens.
“A Post Enumeration Survey is carried out immediately after a population census in order to establish the magnitude of census coverage and content errors. The 2022 Post Enumeration Survey will collect information on persons who were enumerated and those not enumerated during the 2022 during the PHC. If executed diligently, the PES outcomes will help foster confidence in the 2022 Population and Housing Census results,” said Mr Mahonde.
He said the questions from the Post Enumeration Survey will contain questionnaires from the demographic characteristics and the education of the 2022 population and housing census.
“After data collection, a comparison of the two data sets will be conducted in order to establish the percentage of coverage and content errors,” he said.
In an interview yesterday, Zimstat acting manager Surveys and Provincial Operations Mr Langton Chikeya said 153 enumerators representing the country’s estimated population per province have been hired for the exercise.
“We have people from all the country’s provinces and they will be deployed based on the proportional representation of the size of each province. So, the sample is expected to cover the whole population.
“They are expected to cover all the enumeration areas and do what we call match matching process and compare the results with what was obtained when we conducted the census exercise in April,” said Mr Chikeya.
He said from the exercise, Zimstat will be able to establish if there was an overcount or undercount of the population.
Mr Chikeya said Zimstat is still confident that the Population and Housing Census preliminary census results will be out next month. — @nqotshili
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