Sudan ready to start census operations

April 21, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — The Sudanese High Committee for the fifth Population and Housing Census, said on Monday that preparations for the census, which is due to start at early hours of Tuesday morning, have completed.

“The preparations for the census have been finished in all regions in northern and southern Sudan,” Yassin Al- Haj Abdin, the head of census body told a press conference in Khartoum, adding the Sudanese president, his deputies and advisers would be counted in the census which will last till May 6.

He said this census would be comprehensive, bearing economic, social and political importance.

It will be the first census to be held all over Sudan since a comprehensive peace agreement was signed by the Khartoum government and southern rebels in 2005 to end a 21-year-long civil war in the African country.

Meanwhile, President of the Government of Southern Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardeit, called on Sunday upon all citizens in the south to participate in the census.

In a statement given at the enthronement ceremony of Archbishop elect Daniel Deng in Juba, Kiir said the presidency of Sudan have agreed on the issues of ethnicity and religion that was omitted from the questionnaires to be addressed separately soon after the census is concluded..

He stressed the importance of the census in proper planning of public services and infrastructure, and in 2009 presidential elections in Sudan and the referendum in 2011 for the future of southern Sudan.

(ST)