Census results to be released next Tuesday

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Pretoria - The results of Census 2011 will be released to the public and handed over to President Jacob Zuma next Tuesday, Statistics South Africa's Statistician General Pali Lehohla said on Thursday.

The handing over of South Africa's third census results since the dawn of democracy will be done in Pretoria.

"Census generally provides you with knowledge and understanding. The ship has docked. We are ready, the data is very rich," said Lehohla.

Conducted from 10 October to 31 October 2011, the nationwide census will inform government about where the population resides and their access to services.

Information collected through the census will help government plan for the future, as well as to see how far the country has come and what still needs to be done.

Over the course of the census, 14.6 million doors across the country were knocked on with 4.7% of those found to have been vacant. There were a total 103 000 enumeration areas.

During the census, an individual was charged with 50 hours of community service for refusing to be enumerated.

"We monitored what we were doing through an independent monitoring team, who sampled 8 000 (who were monitored independently) of those 103 000 enumeration areas."

A total 135 380 people were employed over the course of the census, while 7 067 branded cars were used.

Lehohla said 63% of the workforce was female. The majority of those employed were between the ages of 20 to 29.

A post enumeration survey, which was much smaller than the original questionnaire, was conducted to calibrate the census.

At the data processing centre in Pretoria, about 225 million pages of the census were handled, with over one million man hours put in at the centre.

Once released, the data will be available on various platforms including the internet, a mobisite as well as on Apple iStore, among others. - SAnews.gov.za