The government is ready to hit the road running on the 2019 National census announcing the major areas its going to focus on.
Apart from it being a digital census,Kenya National Bureau Statistics (KNBS), has announced the official kick off on August 24, ending 31.
The Government intends to focus on 8 main areas;population characteristics, disability, education, labour force, ICT, livestock, agriculture, housing conditions and amenities as well as household assets.
KNBS Director General Zachary Mwangi who has announced the onset of the process, claimed that the 8 main areas of focus are going to used to determine how the country is going to be governed.
The data will basically enable the government in allocation of different national resources to different parts of the country.
Mwangi also said data on agriculture would be key in supporting the Big Four Agenda. The previous census only captured livestock data and did not collect data on agriculture.
“Besides extensive use of technology, this census would also have more details on agriculture to cover the type of crops cultivated by households, aquaculture and livestock,” he added.
Mwangi said the agency also planned to capture the homeless, immigrants and people at hotels to ensure everyone was counted.
The Director also announced specific positions for application for the personnels who will be required to run the exercise.
“KNBS started hiring census staff in June. It expects to have 135,000 enumerators, 27,000 content supervisors, 2,700 ICT supervisors alongside village elders and security personnel. The census staff will only be hired at the regional offices,” he said.
The hired personnel will use the newly launched and tested technology of using the digital gadgets such as those which were used during Huduma Namba registration.
The enumeration clerks will be required to feed data into the gadgets before it is transmitted to a central database.
The cost of running the 2019 census is expected to inflate to ensure that the 45 population estimate all covered.