About 205,000 clerks ready for census

About 205,000 population and housing census clerks will be dispatched on Sunday to various wards, villages and suburbs across the country to embark on collecting data of the long-awaited National Population and Housing Census.

Census Commissioner (Zanzibar) Ambassador Mohammed Haji Hamza told journalists in Dar es salaam that the clerks are all ready and set after days of training and testing.

Tanzania will hold its first digital census beginning Aug. 23. “I want to inform the public that the clerks will arrive in their areas begging Sunday specifically to introduce themselves,” the commissioner said.

Community questionnaires will thereby follow immediately and it will involve respective government leaders who will respond to questions such as the number of available social services like number of schools, health services, and other public infrastructures in respective localities.

The census officials as well as clerks will also be working to verify maps sketched in tablets with reality on the ground as they gather information regarding special groups and the general public.

“Special groups will mean people with various disabilities who will be counted first on the eve of August 23. They also include homeless people, travelers at bus stands and airports where applicable and those who are hard to track and trace,”