adminFarirai Machivenyika Senior Reporter
THE Zimbabwe National Statistical Agency will embark on Multi-Indicator Cluster Survey to obtain data across the country that will assist in the implementation and monitoring of Zim-Asset among other international and regional policy initiatives that Government is signatory to.
The survey will run from February 24 up to the end of April.
Speaking at the opening ceremony for a workshop to train the enumerators Zim Stat Director General Mr Mutasa Dzinotizei said the survey had come at an opportune time for Zimbabwe.
“There are a number of regional and international obligations that the country has signed, the MDGs, the Zundaf (Zimbabwe United Nations Development Assistance Framework) and the Zim-Asset.
“These documents need monitoring and evaluation but to monitor and evaluate a certain programme, whether national or international, we must have the data so this MICS programme is going to provide data upon which Government especially in the social services domain is going to monitor the developments on the social front” he said.
Mr Dzinotizei said the survey would also provide Zimbabwe with an opportunity to update its data on various issues.
“We are getting to the end of the 2015 Millennium Development Goals and the secretary-general of the UN will make a report in New York on the achievements and lack thereof towards the attainment of MDGs, again the MICS programme will give us data on Zimbabwe as far as some of these issues are concerned.
“In order for the President, ministers and various levels of Government to speak authoritatively about developments on the MDGs front, they need to have the data and that is what we are going to provide in partnership with UNICEF in addition to the population census and any other surveys Zim Stat does on behalf of Government,” he said.
Unicef representative Mr Reza Hossaini said Zimbabwe had undergone various challenges in the hyperinflation era, making it critical to update available data on various indicators.
“It is absolutely critical to show the impact of the programme that has been going on for the past three to four years in the country.
“There are not many countries in the world that went through the crisis that Zimbabwe has been through,” he said.
“While every country was going down, here it was going up. But there has been a huge intervention over the past four years so we need to really know what the situation is right now.”
Mr Hossaini said it was also critical to get data that would assist Government in resource allocation.
“It is critical that because of the way MICS is structured and way its carried out, you actually get the this aggregated data which is critical to show government that if you have limited resources where do you put it because the needs will not be the same everywhere- some places will be the more, while in some places it will be less. That helps in terms of the Zim Asset investment and how it could be financed and rolled out,” he said.
The MICS survey will consist of four questionnaires for women aged between 15-49 years, children under five and men aged between 15 and 49 years.
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