Government of Uganda through the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) will not carry out census starting August 25, as earlier planned.
A later date but not far away from the 25th August will be communicated in the due course as Ubos finalizes critical activities which are conducted before the exercise kicks off.
Some of these pivotal activities include mapping, piloting, procuring of equipment used for enumeration, and among others.
Dr Chris Mukiza, the Executive Director of Ubos, addressing a news conference on Thursday expounded on the decision to push the exercise forward.
“We are considering seeking approval from our minister who will go to cabinet to push forward the census to a future date but not far away,” he said.
Adding that: “there are critical activities prior to census that are not completed notable, delivery of tablets that will be used for enumeration, completing census mapping, we have 40% to go, recruitment of census enumerators and training and other ICT equipment like servers.”
Godfrey Nabongo, the Deputy ED had assured the country that whereas the exercise has been postponed, government remains on course
“As earlier communicated this is going to be the first technologically driven census to be conducted in the country. The application of this new technology shall provide results in a timely manner as opposed to the previous paper based census,” Nabongo said.
“Indeed, the Bureau is continuing with various pre-enumeration activities, some of which have been completed. Those which have been completed are:
Census Committees from National level to Districts / Cities are now in place. The Census instruments namely household questionnaire, institutional questionnaire and community questionnaire were developed.”
Nabongo said geo-mapping of Households and Enumeration Area boundaries is now approximately at 62% complete.
“Funds for undertaking the National Population and Housing Census has been secured from Government of Uganda.”
The remaining pre-census activities are procurements, publicity, recruitment and training of census staff and developing digital maps.
The census results will provide indicators to guide planning, policy formulation, programme implementation and monitoring development progress set out in the NDP Ill objectives and also guide in the formulation of NDP IV, as well as implementation of the Parish Development Model (PDM).
He explained that data generated from the Census will be used to monitor International development frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the African Union Agenda 2063 and the East Africa Integration Agenda.