EDITORIAL: State must get it right in census exercise

In two days, the country will conduct a multi-billion-shilling population census. Although the upcoming exercise has not elicited the expected public discourse, its significance is massive and the government must get it right.

The results of a population census help to shape a nation’s development agenda and every effort should be made to ensure that all is credible and accurate.

The country last conducted a population census in 2009 and a lot has since changed since then. The population has grown and the governance structure has also shifted to a two-tier system with the introduction of counties. This clearly demands for fresh data to cover for the shifts so that there is adequate funding for programmes under the new arrangement.

The census would be particularly critical for counties , which have no up-to-date demographic data despite handling key functions like healthcare, agriculture and water.

This situation means that counties as well as the national government have been relying on estimates to plan and draw budgets for key sectors such as education, agriculture and health. The upcoming census offers an opportunity to address this lacuna comprehensively.

Mobilising Kenyans to participate in the census is critical because it would be the only way to extract information for planning future socio-economic programmes as well as to inform allocation of resources for public benefit.

But for this to happen, the safety and security of both census officials and the public should be prioritised, especially in crime prone parts of the country.

Infrastructure remains inadequate in some areas of this country and we hope contingency measures are in place to ensure the enumerators reach every household in Kenya. Politicians should also desist for any partisan utterances that may jeopardise the success of the census.

The biggest responsibility however lies on the census enumerators to play by the rules and ensure accurate data is derived from the public.

The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) maintains that questionnaires on the census are well-structured to maximise harvesting of information and we hope their personnel have been trained to handle the job and to understand the full import of the undertaking.