The ManicaPost
Cletus Mushanawani
News Editor
THE Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat) has joined the growing list of companies and parastatals banning unvaccinated workers from reporting to work in a bid to protect its workforce and citizens.
As the journey towards the April 2022 national census gathers steam, ZimStat, which is mandated to carry out the census and mapping exercise, has recruited and deployed enumerators and mappers to all the districts across the country.
In an interview at Tongogara Refugee Camp during a field visit of the agency’s directorate last week on Saturday, ZimStat Director-General, Mr Taguma Mahonde said the Covid-19 pandemic forced them to review their 2022 national census budget from US$87 million to US$98m to ensure the smooth role out of the whole exercise.
“We had to review the budget from US$87m to US$98m to cater for the procurement of personal protective equipment for our teams on the ground.
“All our teams have been vaccinated as no one is allowed to be in the field without being vaccinated. During the mapping and enumerating exercise, our staffers will be meeting and interacting with many people and need to be vaccinated and protected from this disease,” he said.
Mr Muhonde said: “In the past, we were facing real challenges as our mappers and enumerators stay as teams. Once one is infected, the disease would spread to other team members. When these people test positive, work will stop for more than 10 days as they will be recovering in self isolation centres. We do not want this to affect this important national programme.”
On progress made so far in preparing for the national census, Mr Muhonde said ZimStat has covered most districts in the country.
“We are done with the mapping of most districts and we expect to complete the exercise by January 2022. At first, we were concentrating on expanded areas (new settlements), but when the date of the census was changed to April 2022, this gave us more time to map the whole country. We are looking at counting all Zimbabweans. We want to ensure that we come up with accurate figures.
“There are a number of questions that will be asked during the census exercise to help in other policy issues and we expect all areas to be adequately covered. “Knowing the country’s demographic data will help Government, development partners and other stakeholders to come up with policies that will address issues that affect the populace of Zimbabwe.” said Mr Muhonde.
He expressed gratitude to Government’s commitment in ensuring the timely provision of all needed resources.
“A census is a Government programme, so Government is fully supporting this programme. Development partners are also coming on board and we are meeting with them to finalise on how they can chip in.
“For the first time, the census exercise is also being extended to refugees and we are happy with the progress made so far at Tongogara Refugee Camp despite some of the challenges we are encountering.
“We have language barrier challenges here and we have engaged the services of interpreters so that all the habitants are mapped. The counting of Tongogara refugees is special because these people came to Zimbabwe for special reasons. We need to treat this area as a special case as this is part of Government’s inclusionary agenda,” said Mr Muhonde.
