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Herald Correspondent

THE Government has availed US$98 million to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (Zimstat) for the 2022 population and housing census slated for April 21 this year.

This comes after President Mnangagwa last week launched the 50 days countdown to the 2022 population and housing census.

During the launch, President Mnangagwa said economic blueprints such as Transitional Stabilisation Plan and the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1) required baseline information from various censuses and surveys.

Zimstat has since started the training with Level 1 trainees, who are supervisors, and master trainers who are going to cascade the training to Level 2 and Level 3 trainees who are district supervisors and census enumerators respectively.

A total of 40 500 enumerators from across the country’s 10 provinces have been recruited to conduct the census.

Speaking at a training workshop in Harare, Zimstats director-general ,Mr Taguma Mahonde, said during the first census in 1982 there were lots of development partners in the census process and this year, everything was falling under the Government who are owners of the exercise.

“This is going to be our fifth census and we had an initial budget of US$87 million then with the advent of Covid-19 we had to factor in issues of protective clothing and sanitisers to observe the Covid-19 protocols,” Mr Mahonde said.

“This saw our budget increasing to US$98 million and we want to make sure that US$98 million worth of taxpayers money is put to good use in this year’s exercise. We cannot afford this exercise to miss the target.

“I am glad and grateful that the ministries from where we come from have been giving us massive support and this time we have agreed that we leave the traditional methods and adopt the new methods.

“This shows the commitment and support that ministries are doing to this nation. It is a national project and we need their support.”

Mr Muhonde urged the trainees to take up their training seriously as they were going to cascade the training to the lower levels.

“For us to achieve success, everything is going to be hinged on the Level 1 supervisors and why am I saying so because from here it is us who are going to train the supervisors so if we do not get it right we are going to cascade poor quality training to the lower levels.

“The onus is on us to make sure that what we are going to cascade is of good quality.

“There is a need for us to perform to the best levels. After the training we are going to be provincial supervisors and supervision is critical is data gathering,” he said.