Finance allocates more Shs40 billion for census
Mr William Matovu, a statistics staff, shows journalists a training manual that will be used to train census enumerators. This was during a media inspection of the census materials in Kampala yesterday. PHOTO BY RACHEAL AJWANG
What you need to know:
All set. The money is an addition to the Shs75b, which according to Finance, is enough to conduct the census
Parliament.
The Finance ministry has given the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) another Shs40 billion for the national census scheduled for August.
This will bring the total amount allocated to the statistics body to Shs115 billion for the exercise.
“We have provided enough money to the bureau of statistics to undertake the census. There should not be any excuse not to conduct the census,” Mr Kenneth Mugambe, the director of the budget, said on Wednesday at Parliament.
A team from the Finance ministry had appeared to brief the Committee on Finance about the implementation of the ministry’s 2013/2014 Policy Statement.
Mr Godfrey Nabongo, the spokesperson of Ubos, yesterday said “the allocation means the census is on”.
National planners use the information Ubos gathers during national censuses to, among other things, inform government policy on the creation or otherwise of local service delivery centres.
A necessity
The census should be done after every 10 years but Ubos did not conduct the one scheduled for 2012 since the government did not have money to fund the exercise.
As a result, some local governments have not been effectively executing some programmes. Mr Patrick Okello Oryema, the Nwoya District boss, last year said their budget could cater for only the 2002 population.
