With a budget of over US$6 million and a staff of almost 40,000 officials - 28,635 interviewers, 7,204 monitors and 1,459 other officials - Cambodia's 10-day population census, beginning today and ending Mar 13, is a major undertaking, said San Sy Than, director general of the Planning Ministry's National Institute of Statistics (NIS). Each interviewer will gather data on 120 families, he added.
Census officials have been trained and notified families that a census will be taking place, San Sy Than continued, explaining that basic demographic, economic, cultural and social information will be gathered. "We will [also] gather family-related information about residential situations and household equipment," he said. "This work will help identify the number and characteristics of the people and to estimate population growth from a village level to the Kingdom as a whole."
The Planning Ministry will announce the preliminary results of the census in August and the complete data by 2009, San Sy Than said, calling the census data an "inventory list, a source of information [on the] characteristics of the country's demography."
Accurate statistics would be a great help to planning, San Sy Than said, so Cambodia can "provide a way of better life for Cambodian citizens … [through] poverty reduction, increasing job opportunities, improvements in education and provision of health care services. The census data is also important for other domains such as business, commerce, industry, as well as the demographic research field. Census data will be useful for planning sustainable national economic development, he added. "[We will] offer it to the United Nations to draw up a development plan."
Prime Minister Hun Sen has in the past also shown enthusiasm for national censuses: "The Cambodian population census is the main and necessary task of the country," the premier said at the launch of the first post-Khmer Rouge population census in 1998. "The population census shows the real number of the population and the characteristics of our country's demography for the government to implement its rectangular strategy, build the nation, and keep track of national development plans aimed at solving difficulties and reducing poverty,"
NGOs have expressed concern that the population census could become politically motivated with nationalists hijacking the data to clamor over immigration. However, Hun Sen recently assured that the 2008 census "is not associated with the upcoming election and politics, and does not serve any political party's interest … it is good work for a prosperous future and progressiveness of the Cambodian citizens."
Cambodia has held the population census three times in the last 50 years. The first was held in 1962 during Norodom Sihanouk's Sangkum Reastr Niyum regime. The data showed Cambodia had a population of 5.7 million people. By 1998, the population was 11.4 million people.
San Sy Than claimed that this census would be the most accurate to date as Cambodia is now at peace. "It is not the same as the 1998 population census when some regions were under control of Khmer Rouge," he said. He predicted that the population would rise to 14.5 million. The US$6 million cost of the 2008 census has been divided between the United Nations Population Fund, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the German government.
Neth Pheaktra is a Editor-in-Chief for the Mekong Times
This article first appeared in The Mekong Times
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