Ubos starts census with night travellers, homeless
Some sex workers on the streets. Photo/FILE
What you need to know:
These included street children, sex workers, passengers in transit, the homeless, beggars, operators of taxis and buses in the parks, those who spent their census night in hotels and other accommodations, and other people who the census reference night did not find at their respective homes
This morning, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) kicked off the 2024 National Housing and Population Census (NHPC) by counting the floating population.
These included street children, sex workers, passengers in transit, the homeless, beggars, operators of taxis and buses in the parks, those who spent their census night in hotels and other accommodations, and other people who the census reference night did not find at their respective homes.
Working together with security agencies, Ubos mounted roadblocks on major highways exiting cities and towns to ensure that travellers are counted.
“We are going to stage roadblocks...at the main roads and highways, exiting major cities and towns, so that we can count them. And we shall be giving them cards to show that they have been counted. So, that’s the way it is. Fishermen also, who have gone fishing at night, are on duty,” Dr Chris Mukiza, the Ubos executive director, told reporters on Wednesday.
The more than 119,000 enumerators and over 18,000 Ubos supervisors that were deployed in different places, used the special floating questionnaire while collecting data from this category of people, according to the March 2024 Enumerators’ Manual of instructions Computer-Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI) User Guide.
Prior to the exercise that kicked off at exactly midnight, the Ubos enumerators and supervisors sat with the security personnel, district census officers, district technical officers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and census committee members, and drew how best this population would be handled.
NGOs’ main function here, according to the guide, was to help in enumerating the street children and the homeless.
Mr Johnson Mangeni, one of the enumerators, had told this publication that they were worried about working at night, citing security fears.
But Mr Didacus Okoth, the Ubos spokesperson, said they are working with security agencies to protect all the people involved in the exercise.
Ubos is expected to update the country on how the floating population responded.
