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Cities, villages demarcated for census

ABU DHABI — Work teams involved in the general census of population, housing and establishments in the country have begun demarcating areas in cities and large villages into sectors in preparation to carry out the census, expected to be completed by the end of the year.

A group of 96 officials are on the job and the exercise is expected to be completed today.

Officials said they were dividing the areas in order to make it easier for the census supervisors to carry out field work. "This is to enable them to supervise census work in specifically demarcated areas to avoid overlapping. This will make the census comprehensive without any scope for repetitions in enumeration," a senior official said.

Each supervisor will place coloured placards along the boundaries of his jurisdiction to prevent overlapping, he said, adding that preliminary results are expected to be announced in the first quarter of 2006.

The official said the government would be transparent in disclosing the results of the census.

The government conducted four censuses earlier – in 1975, 1980, 1985 and 1995. But this census will be different in many ways, in that there would be a manifestation of the integration and coordination between federal and local governments. And for the first time, an advanced digital device, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), would be used in a general census of the country, the official said.

The census operation is time-bound, with the preparations stage, which started at the beginning of the year, concluding in May. The second (field) stage began on July 15 and will continue till the end of the year. Processing and analysis of data will take about a year.

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