Kaya 959 Reporter
The time for the government to count South Africans has officially arrived.
Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) has confirmed that this year they are planning on spending R3.2 billion on the nationwide population and housing census.
The counting is said to officially kickstart in February.
Risenga Maluleke, Statistician-General and Head Of Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) recently joined Gugulethu Mfuphi to unpack how the counting will unfold.
It’s been 10 years since the last one in 2011. Maluleke spoke about how COVID 19 played a part in the delay of the counting.
“This census was supposed to be conducted last year in October, but we had to shift the time because of COVID 19 challenges. What is going to happen is that we will start on the night of the 2nd of February, and we will go on with data collection until the end of February.”
“We have a responsibility to count everyone who, on that reference night who will be in South Africa, and I am stressing this point of everyone who will be in South Africa at that time, this includes people who will be in transit,”[sic] says Maluleke,
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The counting is aimed at getting an accurate reflection of the people who reside in South Africa as well as their demographics. The data is also going to be used by businesses and the government to make better decisions.
The entity is targeting 17 million households to collect demographic data. Maluleke spoke a bit about how the R 3,2 billion would be spent.
“Part of the money will be going into salaries, we are going to be hiring 165 000 field workers, in this regard that will be a salary of about R 8 000 per field worker, when you look at that, that’s more than a billion rand that will go into that.
“There are gadgets in the form of tablets that they will be using, which have already been procured,” says Maluleke,


