National Census targets 390,000 families a day

President Paul Kagame and his family were among the citizens who were enumerated yesterday as the National Institute of Statistics (NISR) started to conduct the fourth Population and Housing Census.Details about the first family were recorded by the Director General of NISR, Yusuf Murangwa, at State House in Kiyovu, Nyarugenge District.President Kagame responded to questions about the size of his family, details of the location of his residence, among others.About 390,752 families were scheduled to be enumerated yesterday.A total of 2.7 million questionnaires have been prepared for this census and up to 24,422 enumerators were recruited, trained and readied for the exercise.Every enumerator is tasked to count 16 families daily, according to Prosper Mutijima, the national census coordinator at NISR.“I cannot tell the exact number of homes that have been counted on the first day, not until tomorrow (today) morning. However in towns the exercise was slow because most people were at work,” he said, adding that the exercise went well on the first day.Mutijima said there was no official time for enumerating citizens, explaining that the exercise will be conducted depending on the appointments.Murangwa called on the public to fully participate in the exercise.“There are no specific questions for the President. He was asked the same questions that will be asked to all Rwandans”.Murangwa said the questions include home location, the number of people in the family and their relationship, age, education level and disability of any member, if any, employment status and family assets.“The rules and regulations that guides NISR do not authorise us to reveal any information from any family; the information given is strictly for this exercise,” he noted.He added: “Census enumerators are spread out across the country and will be leaving a note in any home where they do not find people requesting for an appointment to count them during their free time, especially during the weekends”.The two-week exercise is expected to come up with comprehensive socio-economic indicators which will be used for economic planning.People in Diaspora will be counted at Rwanda’s embassies in their respective host countries.Murangwa said provisional national census results will be released in December and final ones early next year.The exercise is estimated to cost Rwf16 billion.The last census was conducted in 2002, and put the population at 8,128,553. But recent estimates indicated the population had surpassed 11 million.Due to their costly nature, national censuses tend to be conducted after every 10 years.