Planning Minister MA Mannan on Monday urged all concerned to successfully conduct the country’s 6th Housing and Population Census as it will now be held on October 25-31, 2021.
“It’s my call to all concerned to successfully conduct the next census with due importance. You’re all (BBS officials and others concerned) well trained and we want to see reflection of it through your work. We hope we’ll see its reflection,” he said.
The Planning Minister was addressing the inauguration of a training programme of the master trainers of the population census held at the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) Auditorium in the city’s Agargaon area.
The week-long sixth population and housing census, which was earlier scheduled to take place in the country from January 2-8, 2021, has been deferred by nearly 10 months due to the situation arisen by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Statistics and Informatics Division Secretary Muhammad Yamin Chowdhury spoke at the function as the special guest chaired by BBS Director General Mohammad Tajul Islam.
BBS Deputy Director Ghosh Subobroto gave the address of welcome while project director of the Housing and Population Census, 2021 Kabir Uddin Ahammad made a power-point presentation on the overall aspects of the upcoming census operations.
Referring to a directive from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to make project related spending cautiously, the Planning Minister said each and every amount should have to be spent carefully, specially all procurement related spending should have to be made vigilantly.
Quoting a line from Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Mannan said those development works should have to be undertaken which could yield better results and ensure welfare of people.
He also suggested conducting the huge task of completing the countrywide housing and population census through a ‘team work’ and thus giving due priority on the campaign of this census.
Noting that the interests of people towards BBS is increasing day by day, the Planning Minister said lending agencies like the World Bank now quotes BBS data.
Lauding the current works of the BBS, he said, “I have some feathers in my hat and BBS is surely one of those. I feel proud of your (BBS’s) work.”
Turning to the successful handling of the Covid-19 situation by the government, the Planning Minister noted that the overall government’s management in tackling Covid-19 crisis was not bad compared to other developed countries like USA, UK, Germany and France.
Statistics and Informatics Division Secretary Muhammad Yamin Chowdhury asked all concerned officials and enumerators to conduct the census operations carefully so that no household and person are left out from the enumeration process.
The Census operations will be held under the project titled ‘Population and Housing Census 2021’ approved by the ECNEC on October 29, 2019 with a cost of Taka 1,761.79 crore to be implemented by the BBS.
The next census would be different from the previous censuses as it will include for the first time expatriate Bangladeshis as well as foreigners staying in Bangladesh.
Besides, unique household IDs will be provided for the first time while data will be collected for the first time through multimode like mobile apps, tabs, web apps, pick and drop, paper-based, call centers, telephone interview and thus an e-census will be operated in limited scale.
Each household and its members will be included in the enumeration process in a certain reference date of the census.
The census data will be very much helpful for formulating proper planning, framing policies and thus attaining the SDGs.
The next population census in 2021 will portray detailed demographic and socio-economic scenario in different segments of sex ratio, youths, adolescents, children, annual growth in population, general fertility rates, birth and death rates, literacy, income or economic participation, working and unemployed population and healthcare and nutrition statuses.
Project Director Kabir Uddin Ahammad said around 4 lakh enumerators and 70,000 supervisors would be assigned to complete the main week-long census operations.
He revealed that the new features of the next census are preparing census block or enumeration areas through using GIS system, formulating integrated census management system and collection data through multi-modal methods.
The previous five population and housing censuses were held in the country in 1974, 1981, 1991, 2001 and 2011 respectively.
