THE forthcoming national housing and population census has so far attracted close to 130,000 employment applications countrywide for the less than 50,000 available field staff positions.
Finance and National Planning Minister Situmbeko Musokotwane as at 10:30hours yesterday. 128,042 applications, broken down as 109,994 enumerators/supervisors and 18,048 zonal coordinators had been received by the Zambia Statistics Agency.
“The census will recruit added. 45,000 youths for the supervisor and enumerator position and 1,800 zonal coordinators. This overwhelming response through all mobile service provider networks has in some instances, caused delays in completing the application process but the recruitment service providers are working round the clock to ease the application time and the situation is expected to normalise, leaving no need for panic among the applicants,” Dr Musokotwane said.
He said in a ministerial statement to Parliament in Lusaka yesterday that applicants must be capable of speaking the language of the area in which they applied for easy interaction with the citizens.
“However, we would like to urge the employed people not to apply for these positions as stated in the running adverts,” he added.
Dr Musokotwane said the census, which would run from August 18 to September 14, 2022, would be the first to be conducted by the country electronically.
He said the recruitment census field staff was also going on through digital platforms, to improve transparency in the recruitment process.
“The census will be launched by His Excellency the President of the Republic of Zambia, Mr Hakainde end. Hichilema on August 17, 2022. The president will also fully participate in the Census and he and the first family will be enumerated on the 18 August 18, 2022,” Dr Musokotwane said.
He urged Members of Parliament to participate in the census and champion the need for constituents to be available and provide accurate information to enumerators.
