Bangladesh to conduct its first digital census between June 15-21

Dhaka: More than 3.7 lakh enumerators, 64 thousand supervisors and 4500 officials will conduct the first digital census of Bangladesh between June 15-21.

Inaugurating a programme for training of census officials in Dhaka on Wednesday, Finance Minister A H M Mustafa Kamal urged the people to make the 6th Population and Housing Census of the country a success by providing the required information to the enumerators.

Planning Minister M A Mannan in his message said that the census activities would be conducted through a web-based integrated census management system with real time monitoring of the process. The data collected through the census would be kept encrypted to ensure security of personal information.

The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) has initiated the process to conduct the ‘Population and housing census 2022’. The data will be collected using Geographic Information System-based digital maps from the field level. Enumerators will use the Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) method to capture data on the digital device tabs. The government has procured approximately 4 lakh digital devices for this purpose.

Detailed information on demographic and socio-economic aspects of the country’s population will be collected during the census. Data on the number of households, drinking water availability, toilet and power facility, source of fuel for cooking, remittance, age of household members, gender, marital status, income and education among other things will be collected during the census.

This is the sixth Population and Housing census going to be conducted by the government of Bangladesh. 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 census was conducted in 2011.