Herald Reporter
POPULATION Census entered its second day yesterday with authorities at the Zimbabwe Statistics Agency saying the process was on track.

Inadequate supply of regalia for enumerators, however, continued to dog the process as some officials were still to secure T-shirts.

Population Census manager Mr Washington Mapeta said there had been no major challenges reported countrywide.

“The process is going on well. We have managed to deal with all challenges swiftly that have risen like the issue of fuel and transport. One issue we still have is on T-shirts and bibs for some of our enumerators,” he said.

He said President Mugabe and his family, who were due to be counted last Saturday, would be counted today.
“We could not count them because they were out of the country. We expect to visit them tomorrow (today),” he said.

Asked whether money to pay the enumerators was now available, Mr Mapeta said relevant authorities were dealing with the issue.
“That is being addressed. What we have started doing is to pay them their training allowances,” he said.

The census commenced on August 17 ends on August 27. President Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara officially launched the 2012 population census in Harare last week.

In his address during the launch, President Mugabe urged the Zimbabwe Statistics Agency to carry out the population census transparently to erase any doubt of the outcome.

Population census assists the Government and other stakeholders in planning and distribution of national resources.

Zimbabwe holds a census after every 10 years with the first having been held in 1982. It showed that the country had 7, 6 million.
There were 10, 4 million people in 1992 with the figure rising to 11, 6 million in 2002.