The government is planning to put in place a strong population and households database for development planning and implementation through the 5th national census of population and households beginning from March 15.
The minister for planning, AK Khandaker, at an exchange of views with the chiefs of media house at the Planning Commission on Thursday stressed the need for proper publicity of the forthcoming census and encouraging people to
provide actual information. He sought media support in this connection.
He said the government had decided to carry out the census in spring because of favourable weather at the time.
The cabinet on October 4 approved that the census should be conducted between March 15 and 19, he said.
The statistics department secretary, Reeti Ibarahim, said the census would be carried out in three phases — primary data collection in March 15–19, data processing for six months, and supplementary data collection and publication of the demographic report in 24 months.
‘There will be 25 questions for the census. Eleven of them 11 will be on family and households and the remaining questions will be on personal information,’ she said.
The whole of the country will be divided into 110 census districts for primary data collection. There will be 3,30,000 counting areas and 60,000 supervisors will work, she said.
Reeti said the floating people would be counted across the country between midnight past March 14 and 6:00am on March 15.
The census quetionnairs will be read with intelligent character recognition software and the date will be processed with integrated computer-aided data entry software to prepare the report at the earliest, she said.
The US Census Bureau will extend its support to holding the census and the UN Population Fund, European Union and USAID are giving technical and financial supports, she said.
The estimated expenditure for the census is Tk 187 crore.
The first census in the country was held in 1974. Censuses were then held in 1981, 1991 and 2001.
The information secretary, Kamal Abdul Naser Chowdhury, and additional secretary of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Shah-jahan Ali Molla, attended.
