THE Bulawayo Progressive Residents’ Association (Bpra) has urged the Bulawayo City Council to conduct its own census for the purposes of development planning based on the actual population of the city.
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Bpra’s calls came in the wake of an outcry triggered by the 2012 census results which indicated that Bulawayo’s population declined to 653 337 people from 676 000 in 2002.
Bpra advocacy and programmes manager Emmanuel Ndlovu said the council census could be combined with the “toilet census” the local authority intends to conduct sometime this year.
Ndlovu said Bpra was disappointed with the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (Zimstat) for deliberately under-counting people in Bulawayo and the Matabeleland regions with the aim of allocating less resources.
“We are calling on council to invest in its own census for the purpose of development in the city of Bulawayo as we have noted with great concern that Zimstat deliberately under-counted people in Bulawayo and Matabeleland in a bid to deprive residents of sufficient resources,” he said.
“It would be practical for the council, as the tier of the government closest to residents to undertake its own census that would be used for the purposes of developmental planning as 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,” he said.
Ndlovu said central government authorities would always release census figures that do not tally with the actual people in Matabeleland who have been marginalised since independence due to political agendas to allocate fewer resources to the region.
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He said council must also realise that the centralised government system was structurally or instrumentally averse to spearheading development in the city.
Bulawayo deputy mayor Gift Banda said the issue of the city conducting its own census has always been a burning one.
He said in as much as it was wise that council conducts its own census, the local authority does not have sufficient funds to carry out the exercise.
“The issue of having the council conducting its own census has over the years been a burning issue, but council is currently not in a position of pursuing the exercise due to insufficient funds,” Banda said. “It is true that the population numbers that have been released over the years do not tally with the actual population of the people of Bulawayo. Something is amiss and it is true that something has to be done so that there is fair allocation of resources.”
