By FRANK KIMARO
Tanzanians have been urged to take part in the forthcoming
census exercise which has been described as unique feature in the development
plans of the country.
The Prime Minister Mr. Mizengo Pinda made the remarks when
launching the campaign on population and housing census 2012, at Mnanzi mmoja
grounds in Dar es Salaam yesterday.
The premier said that the census will kick off on the night
of 25th August through 26th this year.
He further explained that the information to be be collected
through this census will be used by the government and other institutions in
the country as well as the international organizations, business community and
the public in general for various development activities
The data collected will be used for national policies and
making decision base on people’s needs.
The premier mentioned that this year census is of unique
significance because the information collected will be used to make a follow up
and evaluate implementation of the national vision on development of 2025 for
the main land Tanzania and 2020 for Tanzania Zanzibar.
The same information will help to evaluate the national
strategy for poverty eradication strategy in Tanzania (MKUKUTA) and MKUZA for
Zanzibar.
He further added that such information was crucial in
evaluating the MDG`s in 2015 and the National Development Plan for five years
from 2011 to 2016.Mr. Pinda said that the census exercise had no relationship
whatsoever with any religious beliefs of the people or their political
ideology.
“every citizen should participate in the census contrary to
that it tantamount to undermining the government and causing immense loss to
the nation since, this was tax payers money.The premier quoted the father of the nation Mwl. Julius
Nyerere who had said that the people were important human resource for the
nation and through the census it is where you can establish the magnitude and
condition of the wealth.
Dar es Salaam Regional Commissioner (RC), Mr Saidi Meck
Sadiki, said the people should ignore those persuading them to neglect the
exercise, saying such leaders have their own secret agenda which has no public
interest.“This exercise does not aim to get the number of Muslims to build
mosques but statistics are for development plans to improve the people’s
lives,” he said.
In remarks, Population and Housing Census Commissioner,
Hajat Amina Said, urged the people to provide the census clerks with accurate information
and that their information would be confidential only to be used for the
development plans.