New method to be adopted for census

by Ranil WIJAYAPALA

A new method will be adopted at the enumeration stage of the 2011 population and housing census to be conducted from February 27 to March 21 to support the need assessment in the development and administrative purposes by collecting data from the residents, Director, Census and Statistics Department H.R. Gunasekara said.

At the enumeration stage, the Census and Statistics Department will not use the de-facto method of counting people as they are found on an assigned time on a census night. “We are deviating from the earlier method this time and are collecting data from those living in residences for more than six months continuously”, he said.

“We are adopting this method as data users require data on the population who reside in the area as the residents are those that use services such as education, transport, health and security and not those found in the area on a census night”, he said.

At the previous census the data tabulated included people who do not reside in the place where they were enumerated.

He said the Census and Statistics Department is now preparing for the enumeration stage of the population and housing census by training 80,000 enumerators recruited for the purpose and the 16,000 supervisors mainly Grama Niladharis at village level to facilitate the process.

According to the dates fixed for the enumeration stage of the census, enumerators are scheduled to visit houses from February 27 to March 19 to collect data of the persons and houses of the usual residents.

“The homeless people will be counted on March 19 night by the enumerators to include them also in the census”, he said.

The enumerators are scheduled to visit households again on March 20 and 21 at the revision round to revise the data collected based on the number of deaths, births and the change of residence during this period.

“We seek the support of the public since they are the ultimate beneficiaries of this census. They should not be counted in two places. Nobody should be missed out or nobody should be duplicated”, he said.