28 Mar 2019

Statistics Botswana has kick-started preparations for the 2021 national census, census coordinator Mr Kwenagape Mogotsinyane has said.

Addressing Tutume Sub-district Council’s development committee, he said the office had to start early preparations so as to bring all stakeholders on board.

He noted that in the 2011 census, they experienced challenges such as shortage of training facilities for enumerators because the census dates clashed with schools’ calendar. 

He said for the coming census, they wanted to avert similar challenges and were engaging the two ministries of education to reach an understanding on how best to utilise their facilities.

He said the other challenge was inaccessibility of some areas such as farms and ranches, where gates for such places were always locked and located away from homestead, hence entering such places would render enumerators as trespassors.

Mr Mogotsinyane said with early preparations, they would seek assistance from the village leadership and district commissioner’s offices so that owners of such farms and ranches could be contacted and informed about the census process on time.

He said in the last census some communities were offended by misspelled names of their areas and felt degraded and ending up not cooperating or participate in the census.

He therefore stressed that they were going to engage the local authorities and leadership to get clear names of localities within villages, cattle posts and lands to avoid repetition of the 2011 census mistakes.

The oncoming census, he said would count everyone including illegal immigrants and squatters noting that their target was to count all people who resided in Botswana at the time regardless of their status of residence. 

He said census offices have already been established and mapping of households which are to be digitalized is about to start, and that dwelling coordinates will also be captured.  ENDS