Finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal Wednesday urged the countrymen to help enumerators of national population census to complete the headcount successfully.
"Please help us, help enumerators to complete the census as it is not possible to complete quality census without your help," he said while inaugurating a four-day training of master trainers of the population census at the Bangabandhu International Conference Centre.
The training of the master trainers will be held on May 25-28 at the BBS office in the city's Agargaon.
Addressing the inaugural function, Mr Kamal said if a single person was left out from the census, "We will be responsible for the consequences (for not counting the person during the census)".
He said that if data of population was not right, the development planning would not yield correct result.
Cautioning that there might come some misinformation while providing data to the enumerators, he said: "But please do not hinder the project with misinformation or wrong information."
Speaking throu-gh a video message, planning minister Abdul Mannan said the project of population census is technically much better this time than the previous census.
He said the census is called digital census this time because it will be completed digitally.
The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) has taken the project titled 'Population and Housing Census 2022' which will be completed by June 2024.
The sixth Population and Housing Census 2022 will be held across the country digitally from June 15 to 21 to collect complete data on the overall population, its composition, workforce, density, housing and other socio-economic indicators vital for formulating proper economic and other policies.
The upcoming census will be different from the previous ones as it will include, for the first time, the expatriate Bangladeshis as well as foreigners staying in the country.
Besides, unique household identities will be provided for the first time.
Under this census, using GIS (Geographic Information System)-based digital map, data of all households of the country will be collected simultaneously through Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) method with the help of mobile tabs.
Around 0.37 million (3,70,000) enumerators will be appointed to complete the census.
BBS officials said enumerators and supervisors will get training in three phases - on June 4-7 and June 9-12 while zonal and IT officials of the census will get training from May 30 to June 2.
The BBS last published a population census report in 2011 that estimated Bangladesh's population at 149.8 million.
Currently the total population is 168 million, according to the Bangladesh Economic Review 2021.
Md Shamsul Arefin, secretary, cabinet division, Dr Shahnaz Arefin, additional secretary of cabinet division, director general of BBS Mohammad Tajul Islam, among others, spoke at the event.
