Zim Appeals For US$16, 5 Million For Census

ZIMSTAT Director General, Mutasa Dzinotizei told Reporters in Harare Friday on the sidelines of a handover ceremony of seven used 2010 vehicles by the U.S. Government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Economic Growth Office, to his the department that a conference or an indaba was going to be held with development partners to see how much they could contribute.

“$16, 5 million is needed to carry out the census programme but what is important at the moment is the dissemination, collecting, the analysis and the publication of results.

“The figure is just preliminary and the government of Zimbabwe is very much prepared for the programme given that it is a legal requirement that we must carry out a population census after every ten years,” ZIMSTAT Director General, Mr Mutasa Dzinotizei told Reporters in Harare Friday.

USAID Mission Director Melissa Williams said “Good, reliable statistics were the foundation of growth-oriented public policy.

“We hope that this donation, quickly followed by the start-up of the Strategic Economic Research and Analysis (SERA) Project, will allow ZIMSTAT to continue playing a key role in assisting decision makers create better policies that directly impact and benefit the citizens of Zimbabwe, she said.

According to ZIMSTAT mapping which is the initial stage of conducting census has already started and expected to be complete by end of year.

The last census was conducted in 2002.