NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 26 – The government said on Wednesday that more than half of Kenya’s population had been counted by the third day of the on-going census.
Director General of the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics Anthony Kilele told a press briefing that 67 percent of Central Province households had been captured and 44 percent of the North Eastern province population.
“As per (Wednesday) morning average coverage for Coast Province was 50 percent, Eastern and Western have 62 percent, Nyanza 61 percent, Nairobi 55 percent, Nyanza 61 percent and in Rift Valley 60 percent had been counted,” He said.
The statistician was optimistic that by Friday, they would have hit the 80 percent mark though he hoped some areas would be concluded by Thursday.
He also dismissed any possibilities of extending the end-August deadline saying the government was addressing challenges such as insecurity and other irregularities dragging the exercise to ensure counting was completed on time.
Mr Kilele said the government had also increased the number of vehicles in places with transport difficulties such as North Eastern Province.
He also noted that communication was a challenge to coordinate enumerators in some parts of the country due to lack of network coverage.
Mr Kilele re-assured Kenyans that they will be counted and appealed for patience.
“A lot of people thought that census was getting finished (on Tuesday) night so everybody should have been enumerated, this is the problem we have been having,” he said, clarifying that the exercise was slated to conclude on Monday.
Despite his assurances, about 15 journalists attending the press briefing told the Director General that they had not been counted.
Mr Kilele said in places like Nairobi, the initial mapping was affected due to the fast growing urban population and they had to change to accommodate all of them.
“In Nairobi, we have got too many structures, now is when we are realising some of them were not in our mapping, you find 50 families have now moved to a new building,” he said.
About 135,000 enumerators are carrying out the door-to-door exercise counting the number of people in every household.
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