Census 2020 to be implemented in two phases from July 7 - DOSM

The Malaysian Population and Housing Census 2020 will be implemented in two phases from July 7 to Sept 30 and Oct 7 to Oct 24, said the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM).

Chief Statistician Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Uzir Mahidin informed that through the first phase beginning July 7, the data collection would be conducted online while for the second phase starting Oct 7, the data will be collected in person.

"The implementation of the 2020 Census was originally planned to be held from July 7 until July 20 for field operations and for e-Census and Computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) from June 20 to July 9.

"The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO) have affected the 2020 Census implementation method.

However, the census preparation for 2020 will be continued by working from home and adjusting the work schedule by leveraging technology in data collection," he said in a statement in conjunction with the 33 Day Programme Towards Population and Housing Census of Malaysia, 2020, here, today.

"Sistem Online Self-Listing (OSL), e-Census and Computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) will be used.

The use of Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) is also being considered to ensure fast and efficient data processing," he said.

Commenting further, he said Statistics Data Warehouse (StatsDW) was also developed in an effort to strengthen the statistical governance system covering aspects of distribution, archiving, access to microdata and aggregate data that could be utilised during the 2020 Census.

He said the implementation of the 2020 Census was a high-impact and large-scale national project involving Malaysia, namely 32.6 million people in 9 million homes with 8.2 million households comprising 160 administrative districts and 99,356 enumeration blocks

Mohd Uzir said a total of 11,667 workers were employed for the 2020 Census consisting 1,381 Census officers, 14,581 supervisors, 99,356 censors and 349 Committee members.

-- BERNAMA