![Labour Cabinet Secretary, who is the acting Treasury minister, Ukur Yatani on August 7 hinted that Monday, August 26, could be a public holiday. [PHOTO | K24 DIGITAL]](https://k24.digital/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/YATANI.jpg)
Labour Cabinet Secretary, who is the acting Treasury minister, Ukur Yatani, has hinted that Monday, August 26, could be a public holiday to give Kenyans ample time to participate in the population and housing census.
The national census is set to begin from the night of Saturday, August 24 to Saturday, August 31.
“August 26 should be declared a public holiday for us to be able to fully enumerate the exercise,” Yatani told the Senate Labour Committee on Wednesday, August 7, when he appeared before it as the acting Finance and Planning CS.
The minister further wants school-reopening dates pushed back from August 27 to August 31.
“We are still requesting the Ministry of Education to postpone school re-opening dates. This is because we wiil need one more week to undertake the [counting] exercise. I request schools to be reopened from August 31,” said Yatani.
Yatani was accompanied to the session by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics Director General Zachary Mwangi Chege.
About 170,000 enumerators and supervisors have been recruited to work in this year’s Housing and Population Census.
For the first time, all the data required for the census will be captured electronically through a tablet computer. The questions are being loaded on to the gadget and the whole enumeration process will, therefore, be paperless.
