By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, Nov. 9: As all preparations have completed for the National Census 2021 with the theme ‘My Census, My Participation’, thea stakeholders have asked everyone to participate in it and provide actual information.
The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) has been conducting population census every 10 years since 1911 and its twelfth series will be conducted from November 11 to 25.

According to the CBS, trained 40,000 enumerators and 8,016 supervisors will be mobilised for the programme. The data collection process is the most important phase, where the role of supervisors and enumerators is vital to the outcome of the data.
The Bureau has completed the task of enlisting houses and household particulars. It has said that an enumerator has been assigned with the responsibility of reaching nearly 150 households for the census.
Nebin Lal Shrestha, Director General at CBS, said that arrangements had been made to collect data regarding ethnic groups, castes, disable people, languages, gender, class, religion and region guaranteeing people’s fundamental rights and right to privacy as per the constitutional provisions.

“We would like to request everyone to participate in this national event,” said Shrestha. Speaking at a Media Sensitisation Workshop, organised by the Media Action Nepal (MAN) in the context of the upcoming census on Monday, Shrestha urged everyone to cooperate for the smooth conduction of the census, as participation of each individual is equally important.

He asked people to coordinate with enumerators especially in city areas including Kathmandu Valley where data collection would be quite challenging. He assured that the details provided by individuals would be kept confidential.
Shrestha said that the privacy of the respondents would be maintained but warned that if people didn’t provide information, they would be punished for breaking the law.
“We have estimated that each household would take 10 minutes to 25 minutes in responding to the questioner,” said Shrestha.

According to the CBS, 80 questionnaires, including 25 for listing households, 55 main questionnaires and the 'community questionnaires' have been listed for the census.
“We have used codes in order to avert the errors, which may occur during data collection,” said Shrestha.

The main questionnaires of the National Census include the economic activities, profession, status of drinking water, details as per the production of goods and services, unlisted business activities run by the family members, fuel, communication mediums in the family, property in the name of women, domestic enterprises, estimation of maternal death and individuals in foreign employment, among others. The CBS has set up coordination mechanisms from the central to the ward levels covering social, economic, geographical, physical infrastructure and other sectors for the national census.

Dhundi Raj Lamichhane, CBS director, said that the preliminary results of the national census would be made public within three months after the completion of census and it would provide details of total population including male and female.
As the country is practicing the federal system, it is the responsibility of local levels to update the varied statistics for the purpose of development planning, said Lamichhane, adding the statistics of the census is very useful for policymaking.
The CBS has recruited more local youths and teachers as supervisors or trainers to review the data collection process. There are 80 census offices in district level and 349 in local levels of the seven provinces.
On the occasion, Dr. Hashina Begam, UNFPA deputy representative for Nepal, asked media houses to provide proper space to the news related to the national census.

Ramesh Bista, vice chair of the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ) said that the programmes of national interest and priorities should also be the priorities of media. Bista asked the media to create pressure on the concerned authorities for the collection of fact-based statistics. The census-related issues are everyone’s responsibility, he added.

Senior journalist Dhrubahari Adhikary said that media should play a vital role in building awareness about census-related issues. Another journalist Namrata Sharma asked all journalists to check the facts related to census issues and make the concerned authorities aware about them. She also asked them to transmit factual information and disseminate actual gender information for the same.

Laxman Dutt Pant, chairman of MAN, informed that around 200 journalists of all seven provinces participated in the workshop on Population and Housing Census of Nepal 2021.