By Nevson Mpofu Munhumutapa

Zimbabwe is running its 5^th census since 1980. This time it is titled Population and Housing Census. The census is taking out of Government coffers 1, 4 billion RTGS/ Real Time Gross Settlement ..

The after decade activity was announced at its inception launch in Harare at the Kaguvi Building on Friday 25 January.  The census will be held in the month of August as is the tradition.

ZIMSTA Director General Taguma  Mahonde addressing Journalists said this is a population and Housing census because it has to take more of the information in whole in connection with full details of the family members

‘’We do not mean to say we are counting number of houses. We count people. There is data to be taken to know how we plan and put our budget annually. We know the number of school children, orphans among them and how the Government can manage’’.

He said all the needed information shall be collected as usual but this time it will be made easier because they will harness Information Communication Services like use of Computers.

‘’The country shall utilise the availability of ICT Services. It means this time it will be easier to collect data. It is called the population and housing census because we look at each family taking full details’’.

‘’Utilising ICT will make us collect the data that we actually need ranging from the number of family members , age grouping , parentage and the main  information to be collected . We will not face difficulties as far as all is concerned ‘’.

ZIMSTAT made it clear on some areas of several unanswered questions like on the people outside the country and donors like UNFPA [United Nations Population Fund Support] He pointed out clearly that census would on take information of people present at a house at that particular moment. Secondly he pointed out that there were no donors yet to help.

‘’We have no support from donors yet in terms of this. May be they will come to help. The information will be collected house by house. It’s only for those at a particular house from which information will be collected from ‘’.