By Feizal Samath
COLOMBO, Apr 18 2001 (IPS)

Put off all these years by the ethnic conflict, Sri Lanka’s first population census in two decades will finally be held in July.

On Jul. 18, more than 100,000 government workers and students will knock on home doors across the country to count the population and collect social and economic information about people of the Indian Ocean island nation.

The last headcount, held in March 1981 estimated Sri Lanka’s population to be 14.8 million, up from 12.7 million in 1971. Official estimates put the population now at 19.4 million people.

Held once every 10 years, the census had to be cancelled in the year 1991 because of the Tamil Tiger insurgency.

The rebels unleashed unending violence 18 years ago to press their demand for a separate home for Sri Lanka’s minority Tamil people.

“It is an enormous task, but we have begun quite well,” says Wimal Nanayakkara, Director of the Census and Statistics Department, which will conduct the survey.

The census will also cover the war-torn northern and eastern region, where enumerators will even walk into the homes of Tamil rebels and their families.

Sri Lankans will have to answer a set of 25 questions, ranging from age, race, employment and schooling to information on fertility and health status.

According to Amara Satharasingha, a statistician at the Census and Statistics Department, two stages of the four-phase census process have been completed.

The first involved demarcating the boundaries of census areas. Some 80 housing units are included in one census block. The entire country is divided into 100,000 such blocks.

Census workers visited and began numbering houses in the second stage, which was completed by March end.

The number has been written on a red label and pasted on the front door frame or in some other prominent place for identification by census enumerators.

This was not easy in Colombo. “There were some people in the capital who were reluctant to open their gates for security reasons,” says census chief Nanayakkara.

However, census workers had no problems in marking homes in Tamil Tiger rebel-held areas in northern Sri Lanka.

On Jul. 18, Sri Lankans will be requested to stay at home between six p.m. and midnight so that census enumerators can visit them.

“On this day, people in the streets, railway stations, bus halts and other outdoor places are also counted ensuring that every single person living in this country is counted,” says statistician Satharasinghe.

Census chief Nanayakkara says the timing of the census may vary from place to place, particularly in the troubled north and east. However, he did not expect the rebels to create problems for the census.

Sri Lanka’s actual population would be known within a week of Jul. 18 and the census chief expects the number to be close to the current estimate of 19.4 million.

“We have been compiling figures annually based on birth and deaths and our population estimates are fairly up-to-date,” he says.

An estimated 350,000 births are reported every year in the country. Since school admissions need a birth certificate, at least 98 percent of the births are recorded in Sri Lanka.

His department has also monitored immigration and emigration patterns. Nanayakkara expects the census to reveal interesting data on migratory patterns.

“Migration statistics have always been a problem. Our current data is based on information collected at the entry and exits points in the country. Often this data is flawed since we are unable to ascertain the categories of people who leave the country,” he points out.

A major problem is that thousands of Tamils have fled the country, using boats to neighbouring India after the ethnic violence broke out in July 1983.

Another estimated half a million Sri Lankans have gone to Western nations as refugees using both legal and illegal channels since then.

At least one million Sri Lankans are also working legally in the Gulf states and other countries.

However, Sri Lankans living abroad will not be counted. “On Jul. 18, only those who are physically living in Sri Lanka would be counted. It would like taking a picture of the entire Sri Lankan population on that day,” says Nanayakkara.

The census will yield a wealth of data for national development planners. The compilation of the country’s housing stock will be far more comprehensive this time than in the last census.

This census involves a 100-percent count of housing units in both the urban and rural areas. The 1981 census covered only 10 percent of housing stock in the rural areas.

Unlike the 1981 census, which was entirely a manual operation, computers will be used in a big way. Estimated to cost 300 million rupees (3.6 million U.S. dollars), the exercise is partly funded by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Sri Lanka was the first South Asian nation to hold a census in the year 1871, followed by India, which began counting its population in the year 1881. The latest census will be the 13th.

Nepal held its first census in the year 1911, Pakistan 40 years later, Bhutan in the year 1969, the Maldives in 1972 and Bangladesh in 1974.

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