August census will be digitised

Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich has warned leaders against politicizing the upcoming national population census.

Rotich said utterances by politicians are likely to compromise the two-day exercise set to take place on August 24th and 25th, this year.

The CS asked politicians who have issues with the exercise to wait for its completion and then lodge complaints.

At the same time, Rotich dismissed claims that the census exercise is more expensive compared to other countries in the region.

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He said the census exercise will Ksh18.5 billion, which he says meets the international standards.

This year’s census will focus on Agriculture and household incomes as the key data that the government would be seeking to collect.

Data collection and processing will be fully digitized to improve on quality and accuracy of results.

“With the digital census Kenyas are assured of timely release of Census results”, assured Rotich.

The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) plans to spend Ksh 10 billion on buying bio metric equipment for data collection and another Ksh 8 billion on hiring and training staff.

The government said, the 165,000 tablets that would be used in the national census exercise would be procured from the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) and Moi University.

#KenyaCensus2019 KNBS will acquire about 165,000 mobile devices to undertake the digital census. The devices will be acquired through our local higher learning institutions through the digital literacy programme #KenyaCensus2019 pic.twitter.com/f3nYLG9vum

— KNBStats (@KNBStats) January 23, 2019

Recruitment of staff to undertake the national census is set to begin in June this year.

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