Statistics office receives K26mil for 2024 census

By ANTOINETTE POIVI
THE National Statistical Office (NSO) has confirmed that it has received K26 million out of the K50 million budgeted this year for the 2024 Census.
National statistician John Igitoi said NSO initially requested K105 million from the Government for this year.
He said they now had a funding gap of K55 million to roll out the Census.
“This will definitely affect the operations,” he said.
“Census is a resource-intensive exercise and it’s a mandatory activity, we go to where people are and enumerate them. We will need to go by helicopter or by boat or walk.”
Igitoi said for next year’s enumeration and material to be taken to different locations, it would cost about K150 million.
“We will be using computer-assisted personal interviews and we will need more than 20,000 tablets that will be used by field officers at different locations,” he said.
“We will also be using 20,000 to 25,000 people that will be engaged to help carry out this operation.”
This Census is the fifth national and housing population Census that was deferred in 2021 due to the pandemic.
“We are going to use tablets and that’s to reduce the statistical processing time and also to improve the quality of information and safety on the collection of information,” Igitoi said.
“We conducted the social and demographical economic survey last year so the statistical processing time was reduced to nine months.
“One of NSO’s current preparations this year has been to have conduct urban structural listing and mapping.”
Igitoi said provincial administrators had provided a list of their provincial Census coordinators who completed workshops last month and signed their contracts with NSO.