About 1,000 people, yesterday, began a two-week sensitisation workshop at five training centres countrywide on various guidelines on how next month’s census will be conducted.It is expected that these will help in creating awareness amongst enumerators at the sector level who are scheduled to conduct a house-to-house counting exercise for all family members in the census that kicks off on August 16. Unlike most other surveys which use sampling principles to estimate required statistics, the upcoming census will be exhaustive and will give the exact size of the Rwandan population.At one of the training centres in Musanze District, Francois Sekamondo, from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MINECOFIN) told participants that each household will be expected to give detailed information regarding the people who slept in that family on the night of August 15.“The 15th of August will be taken as the ‘census night’ and all those carrying out the exercise of counting will refer to this day,” said Sekamondo, who is also the coordinator of Census in the Northern Province.He said this will help to avoid the mistake of failing to count some people as well as missing out on others.While opening the training, Provincial Executive Secretary Déogratias Kabagamba, said that this exhaustive census will enable evidence based planning.“As you prepare to facilitate a successful census, be ready to give your all because this exercise will help in proper planning for the development of the country,” Kabagamba said.Christopher Ndoli, one of the participants, observed that the training process will enable them to conduct a flawless process.The previous census was conducted ten years ago putting Rwanda’s population at 8,128,553, but higher figures are expected this time.A survey conducted by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR) last year put projections at close to 11 million people.
