BY MIRIAM MANGWAYA
Preliminary results of the 2022 Population and Housing Census held last month will be released in August this year, the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat) has announced.

The 2022 Population and Housing Census took place from April 21 to 30, 2022, while a sweeping exercise concluded on May 6, 2022.

ZimStat spokeswoman Mercy Chidemo said NewsDay that the 2022 population census had been digitized to improve the rapid processing of data, which would allow the results to be published in a shorter time compared to previous years.

“Preliminary results are expected within the next three months, that is August,” Chidemo said.

“We will have a full report by December. We will do a post-censal survey to assess the quality of our data. The process will be facilitated by digitization. Using the digital system, we are currently detecting errors on the demographics which will then be checked and corrected by our enumerators, so the three-month period is actually shorter than the three years it would take to publish the results of previous years.

The 2022 population census was marred by irregularities, including the involvement of members of the security services and Zanu PF youth, as well as the late payment of enumerators, among others.

Some enumerators say they have not yet received their allowances almost two weeks after the exercise.

However, teachers who participated in the process as investigators said NewsDay that they were paid $320,000 for the 20 days they participated in the census, which is far more than their monthly salaries.

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