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The government has directed local council authorities to ensure that census enumerators are safe and access homes to conduct enumeration.

Addressing journalists at the Uganda Media Centre in Kampala on Thursday ( May 9, 2024), the ICT and national guidance minister, Dr Chris Baryomunsi, said this will make the work of enumerators easy and ensure positive results.

“The local leaders are part of this exercise and they should be able to guide those enumerators to different homes. Once an enumerator comes to your home, you should be able to cooperate. Our communities should be encouraged to stay at home so that they can be counted for the government to plan for them better,” Baryomunsi said.

He emphasized; “The enumeration will take place during the day, there is no enumeration at night except if it is on the special appointment of the floating population such as street children, travellers, among others. Those who are busy with a lot of work, the enumerators might come and not find them at home and an arrangement may be reached for enumerators to return at night. Otherwise, ordinarily, there will be no enumeration at night.”

Baryomunsi added that the census, among others, provided an opportunity for the country to know its wealth.

“With the leadership of UBOS, the government has made arrangements to ensure that everybody in every corner of this country is enumerated starting at 6am tomorrow. As earlier communicated, it’s a public holiday and we request people to stay at home so that when enumerators come they find you there and they administer the questionnaire that has been prepared for you to answer,” he said.

He added; “The various questions that they will be asking refer to the conditions people live in such as their level of education to know people’s level of education, among others with the aim of informing proper planning. We call upon everybody to make sure they participate. There should be no fear of being counted because there is nothing harmful, there is nothing wrong with being counted. It actually matters to be counted because you will have facilitated the government to plan for you better.”

The Government declared Friday a public holiday to enable people to be counted in the first digital National Population and Housing Census (NPHC) 2024.

In the 2014 census, results showed that Uganda had a population of 34 million people and it is projected to have since grown by 12 million more people to 46 million.

However, this can only be verified through a national census.