City Desk :
A rally was held on Wednesday in the capital marking the inauguration of the operations of country’s 6th Population and Housing Census.
The rally, headed by State Minister for Planning Dr Shamsul Alam, started from the office premises of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) in city’s Agargaon area at 11:30 am and ended at National Museum of Science and Technology in the capital.
The State Minister inaugurated the rally though releasing balloons and pigeons, reports BSS.
Statistics and Informatics Division Secretary Dr Shahnaj Arefin, BBS Director General Mohammad Tajul Islam, Population and Housing Census project director Md Dilder Hossain, among others, attended the rally.
Besides, officials and employees from the Statistics and Informatics Division, BBS, various Ministries, Divisions, Agencies, Bangladesh Scouts, Bangladesh National Cadet Corp, Girls Guide also took part in the rally.
Besides, rallies were also held at all the divisional headquarters headed by the concerned divisional commissioners and at districts headed by the concerned deputy commissioners.
The official operations of the Census began at the zero hours of today which was considered as reference point as the enumeration process of the homeless and hapless people started then at some 20,000 spots across the country which lasted till 6:00 am on Wednesday.
Then from 8:00 am today, the main operations of the census started across the country which will continue till June 21.
Earlier, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday inaugurated the week-long sixth Population and Housing Census, which is being conducted digitally for the first time in the country to make it flawless and successful.
The premier opened the much-awaited census through a ceremony at her official Ganabhaban residence here this morning.
The BBS is conducting the weeklong census in digital format, over 11 years after the last census concluded in 2011.
The data from the field-level for the census will be collected during June 15-21, which will also be considered as “census week”.
The enumerators will continue their operations everyday from 8:00 am in the morning till dusk while the enumerators would also go to houses of the people at night if there is any request.
Besides, basic data from the non-resident Bangladeshis would also be collected in the census.
To make the census a success, some 3,65,697 enumerators, 63,548 supervisors, 3,779 IT supervisors, 3,779 zonal officers, 163 district census coordinators and some 12 divisional census coordinators will remain active in various tiers of the census activities.
A state of the art call center has already been set up at the BBS headquarters from where anyone through dialing 09602998877 would be able to get any census related information.
The country’s first Population and Housing Census was held in 1974 followed by the 2nd census in 1981, the 3rd one in 1991, the 4th census in 2001 while the 5th one in 2011.
For conducting the census, web-based Integrated Census Management System (ICMS) and Geographical Information System (GIS) have already been formulated while control maps for the enumeration areas have also been prepared.
In this census, using GIS-based digital map, data of all households of the country will be collected simultaneously through Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing method using digital device ‘tabs’.
Under the census operations, demographic and socio-economic data like number of households and their nature, ownership of homes, main source of drinking water, toilet facilities, power facilities, main source of fire for cooking, economic operations, inward remittance, age of household members, gender, marital status, religion, obstacles, education, work, training, mobile phone and internet usage, bank/mobile banking accounts, small ethnic groups, nationality and various district-wise information would be collected.
