Mangwana encouraged people to welcome the enumerators as they mean no harm and he spoke about specific cases on Twitter with the captions;

“CENSUS CHALLENGES

There are some people in Harare not cooperating with enumerators. Please cooperate.

An enumerator was chased away by a respondent holding a knife threatening to kill him, in Warren Park. The case was reported to police and the respondent was arrested.

Another case was of an enumerator who was offered USD150 by Pakistani family in Avondale thinking that he was from the immigration department. Case reported.

An enumerator in ward 41 was biten by dogs.

In Mandara one case was reported of a respondent who wanted to burnt an enumerator with some hot water.”

CENSUS CHALLENGES
There are some people in Harare not cooperating with enumerators. Please cooperate.
An enumerator was chased away by a respondent  holding a knife threatening to kill him, in Warren Park. The case was reported to police and the respondent was arrested. pic.twitter.com/vZ09a9C0L4

— Nick Mangwana (@nickmangwana) April 24, 2022

Nick Mangwana also spoke about an enumerator who had his recording tablet stolen in Gutu with the caption;

“GUTU

Some robber mugged a #Census2022 supervisor and took the Tablet in Bikita. He was caught trying to sell the gadget in Gutu. This thing has a 2gb storage and surely the risk of being charged with handling stolen property is not worth it. Don’t bother.”

GUTU
Some robber mugged a #Census2022 supervisor and took the Tablet in Bikita. He was caught trying to sell the gadget in Gutu. This thing has a 2gb storage and surely the risk of being charged with handling stolen property is not worth it. Don’t bother. pic.twitter.com/eUNj5E4UaW

— Nick Mangwana (@nickmangwana) April 25, 2022

With all these challenges in mind maybe there should have been more efforts made by the government in educating people fully on what a census is and the purpose of recording the data they need. People could have possibly confused census people with political party people and that could also explain the violence. The exercise has clashed with the pre-election campaigns and possibly left some ignorant people feeling paranoid.

The post Shocker: Zimbabweans Are Attacking Census Enumerators appeared first on Provoker Magazine.

The 2022 Population and Housing Census will be held from 21 to 30 April and Zimstat aims to establish the country’s employment and unemployment rate. Zimstat will be using the definition for unemployment set by the ILO (International Labor Organisation).

In an interview in Bulawayo, Zimstat acting manager Surveys and Provincial Operations, Mr Langton Chikeya said a part of the census with be to establish the country’s working population. He said everyone who is involved in profit-generating projects, including sex work, will be considered to be “gainfully employed”. In his words;

“If we get our working population then we are going to classify them into a labour force where we have people who are employed and those who are not employed. So, we define employment as work performed for others in exchange for pay, profit or family gain. So, those who are employed are employees, for example, a statistician is an employee of a certain company and those who are self-employed or we can call them on account workers for instance vendors can be called on account workers, because they are doing work for profit,

You can also talk about sex workers, they are doing work for profit or family gain. We also have employers who also fall under the bracket of employment.”

Mr Chikeya clarified that acts like begging and stealing will not be considered work because they are not producing goods or services. He also said the census will also make a classification for individuals who will be considered to be unemployed.

 “We have part of unemployment, there are three conditions that are supposed to be met if we want to say this person is unemployed. We are saying a person is unemployed if the person is without work, is seeking work and available for work,

“If you do not meet any of these three you are not in unemployment. I think that is where most people get it wrong when they classify unemployment. You have to satisfy the three conditions if you are to be considered unemployed for you to be called unemployed.”

It gets a bit tricky when he says that those that are not working but aren’t seeking employment will not be classified as unemployed but “discouraged work seekers”. Firstly, most Zimbabweans are “discouraged work seekers” and the need to feed their families is what drives them to find alternative methods of making money.

Mr Chikeya is basically saying that anyone who is out there selling goods or giving service for money will be classified as “gainfully employed”. While this may technically be right according to the definition, what exactly is being said? Does it mean that they will confidently tick the box “employed” for a qualified accountant who finds himself selling tomatoes because of the state of our economy?

The ILO estimates that sex workers support on average 5 to 8 people with their earnings and they contribute to economic activity. In a stable economy, most women who resort to sex work would not be performing the work, to begin with. Most people in Zimbabwe consider themselves unemployed even though they have the means to make money through “hustling”. This is because one may not consider it “gainful” if the work they do is way below their qualification and does help them improve their livelihood. Is a person that lives hand to mouth and cannot afford basic needs like good medical care, healthy food and good security gainfully employed?

The post Census 2022; Zimstat To Consider Sex Workers And Hustlers “Gainfully Employed” appeared first on Provoker Magazine.