Census: ZimStart begins 5-day mop up

Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat) will in the next five days, be mopping up those who were not counted for one reason or the other, during last week's counting.

Yesterday, ZimStat said it wanted to make sure everyone is counted and assured the nation that it was still on course to publish findings from the 2022 Zimbabwe Population and Housing Census that ended on Saturday in three months.

The night of April 21 was set as census night, the reference point where the census tries to place every person.

This year, as the title makes clear, the census is going beyond just counting people by age group, gender, education and the like, but has been including a lot of detail on housing and living standards, providing data and statistical trends that can benefit a wide range of social planners.

This year's census was paperless, as enumerators used tablets to capture the data. The enumerators yesterday surrendered the tablets and other required equipment and documents that they were using to ZimStat officials.

The new technology facilitates logic checks, validations during the interviews, skip patterns and makes the census more efficient in assuring high quality data enters the server without mistakes.

ZimStat spokesperson Ms Mercy Chidemo said the three months is for analysing the data which was gathered by enumerators across the country.

"We expect results to be ready in three months' time. We have a data quality management team, which has been working on cleaning the data that was being synched to the server.

"We are having a mop-up exercise from May 1 to 5, 2022, for those who were not found at home by enumerators," she said.

For the first time since the first ever census in 1901 was conducted, ZimStat introduced a dashboard that monitors the enumeration process and events on the field in real time.

In Zimbabwe, a census is conducted every 10 years and it informs how policies are crafted.

ZimStat director-general Mr Taguma Muhonde said the enumeration had been going on smoothly.

"The enumeration exercise has been going on well with the exercise having been made easier by the use of technology. The process is now simple.

"We appreciate that there are people who have not yet been enumerated because of various reasons and we have applied for an extension of the enumeration exercise, which is our mopping up phase so that everyone gets a chance to be counted for us to have accurate data," he said.

Mr Mahonde also expanded on the questions that are being asked during the census.

"We are always guided by the United Nations in our line of questioning and this year they wanted us to concentrate more on housing issues. That is why we had questions that had something to do with houses. All questions asked were relevant to the planning and development of the nation."

The preliminary report of the

census is expected to be out in the next three months with the final report expected to be out in six months.

After the release of the census report, the delimitation is expected to commence ahead of the 2023 general elections.

Meanwhile, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) completed the second phase of its mobile voter registration blitz yesterday.

In a statement, ZEC chief elections officer Mr Utoile Silaigwana said those who want to register to vote should visit ZEC offices across the country.

" . . . the commission's 63 district and 10 provincial offices will remain open during normal working hours for purposes of continuous voter registration in terms of section 17A of the Electoral Act," he said.