The Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) will be conducting the listing of housing units at two-year intervals to have an up to date demographic profile of the country from this year, DCS Director General Dr. Amara Satharasinghe said.
The first population and housing consensus was conducted in 1871 and the last one was in 2012. The practice has been to conduct the consensus at 10-year intervals.
“The DCS decided to go for a two-year survey since 10 years is a too longer gap and in case of a major natural disaster there would not be up to-date information. Having a shorter interval will enable us to furnish current information to the government and to those who require it,” Dr. Satharasinghe said.
Preliminary work on the project commenced during the latter part of last year and the DCS hopes to complete the field work by mid this year.
However, according to the director general the two-year census will not comprise all information pertaining to population and housing in the country but pre-identified key indications of the segment since it is a costly exercise.
Population and housing census covers the nine provinces, 25 districts, 14,021 grama niladhari divisions and 324 divisional secretariats. The grama niladhari divisions are subdivided in to census blocks. Each census block comprises 120 housing units.
“The advantage of the subdivision is that enumerators could complete the census within a shorter period,” Dr. Satharasinghe said.
The DCS prepares a map indicating the boundaries of the provinces, districts, divisional secretariats, grama niladhari divisions and census blocks prior to conducting the census. The hard copy maps are converted into soft copies with the assistance of the Disaster Management Centre (DMC).
“The DCS has sought the assistance of the DMC in this task since the DCS is preparing for the next round of population and housing census which will be conducted in 2021, the director general said.
The DCS with the DMC is also preparing a geographical information system (GIS) where each census block will comprise a comprehensive demographic and housing profile.
According to the 2012 census there were 65,000 census blocks.
Dr. Satharasinghe said the advantage of a GIS is that in the case of a natural disaster if a satellite image of the affected area is obtained it could be overlayed on the census block and thereby affected areas could be identified and then statistics related to population, gender, age groups and economic activity and number of housing units by type of construction material could be counted falling within affected census blocks. He said if the GIS operated from Colombo it will enable the carrying out of preliminary relief operations with statistics on the number of people and housing units affected. The last survey revealed that there were 5.2 million housing units in the country with the Western Province comprising the highest number of units. It also showed that the economically active population of males was 75.8 percent while females was 30.0 percent. The DCS is the national statistical office responsible for the collection and dissemination of statistical data requirements of the government and other data users. Apart from its responsibility of collecting and supplying data on the various sectors of the demographic, socio-economic conditions of the country, it is required to recruit, train and place professional staff to all government agencies requiring statistical services. In addition, it provides statistical consultancy services to the agencies that require assistance on statistical matters.