Press Release - BCC Should Invest in its Own Census

Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association (BPRA)

Press Release

Date:               15 May 2014

Contact:         Emmanuel Ndlovu

                        Advocacy and Programmes Manager

                        0775 233 581

                        Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association (BPRA)

BCC Should Invest in its Own Census

The Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association (BPRA) has called upon the Bulawayo City Council (BCC) to invest in its own census for the purposes of developmental planning in the wake of the release of 2012 national census results that show Bulawayo’s population in decline. BPRA believes the BCC census could be combined with the ‘toilet census’ that the local authority intends to carry out this year. The association has in the past criticized the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (Zimstat) of deliberately under-counting people in the Bulawayo and Matabeleland regions with the aim of allocating less resources to the region. In a press statement after the release the of preliminary census results in December 2012, BPRA argued that: “the results may have been tempered with for political reasons as a basis for reducing resource allocations to the Matabeleland region which has been marginalised since independence.” According to the 2012 census, Bulawayo has a population of 653,337 people down from 676,000 in 2002. The 2002 Bulawayo figures were themselves dismissed as inaccurate by stakeholders from Bulawayo.

BPRA believes it is high time BCC invested in its own census as it has become normal for the national authorities to release census figures that do not augur well with the people of Matabeleland and smack of political agendas to allocate less resources to the region. While the national census has taken on a political outlook, it would be pragmatic for BCC, as the tier of government closest to the residents of Bulawayo, to undertake its own census that would be used for the purposes of developmental planning. This would provide useful data for use at the local level in terms of coming up with a development strategy for the city that covers issues like housing, health infrastructure and water provision. In the context of continued marginalisation of Matabeleland since independence, BPRA believes complaining about census results will not yield positive results as the centralised government is structurally or instrumentally averse to spearheading development in Matabeleland. It is for this reason that BPRA proposes a local census that will enable BCC to plan its developmental projects based on the actual population of Bulawayo.

Population figures are the basis for development planning and therefore allocation of resources. They are also key in determination of the size of constituencies during delimitation of electoral boundaries.

Signed

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BPRA Advocacy and Programmes Manager

Emmanuel Ndlovu