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Lumbidzani Dima, Chronicle Reporter
ALL is set for the 2022 Population and Housing Census that will kickstart tomorrow nationwide, with the census night being today.

The census is set to run from tomorrow to April 30, while the results are expected after three months.

The country conducts censuses at 10-year intervals, with the first population census conducted in 1982 and in the years that followed in 1992, 2002 and 2012.

In the beginning of April, ZimStat conducted awareness campaigns through roadshows across different provinces with the aim of educating people about the importance of the census and why they need to be counted in order to increase the response rate.

ZimStat public relations and communications manager, Ms Mercy Chidemo said the census night is the reference for the whole census programme.

“Whoever sleeps at a house on April 20  will be counted in that household. The census night is the reference point for all enumerations, so every question that will be asked will be referring to that night. Only those who will have slept there are counted so as to avoid double counting.

“If one moves from one area to the next after April 20, they are counted where they were during that night regardless of moving permanently. Those who work night shifts and go back home the following morning are counted in their respective households,” she said.

Ms Chidemo said as for those moving into Zimbabwe from other countries, they will be counted separately on the immigration section.

She said the preparations went well and they are starting as planned with the census night enumerators and other collective households, then everything else follows.

Government recently urged Easter congregants to remain at their houses during the census period to ensure the smooth conduct of the exercise.

According to plan, ZimStat will deploy a high-tech data collection system, the Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI), which transmits data collected by enumerators over the internet to a central mainframe in real-time. As a result, the census exercise will be completed within six months.

Previously, it took the national statistics agency up to two years to collect and process data before producing the final Census Report.