State House has withdrawn its earlier communication announcing August 26 as a public holiday to facilitate smooth counting of Kenyans.
“Contrary to our earlier dispatch on the 2019 Kenyan Population and Housing Census, we wish to clarify that President Uhuru Kenyatta did not announce that August 26 will be a public holiday,” said PSCU in a statement to newsrooms Friday night.
“We regret the error and wish to say that as much as the Kenya Census is important to the country, August 26 which be on a Monday will not be a public holiday. Our apologies for the inconveniences caused by the erroneous communication,” said PSCU.
On Friday evening, State House had announced that President Kenyatta had declared August 26 a public holiday to allow smooth facilitation of the National Population and Housing Census.
“The Government has designated August 26 as a public holiday to allow maximum enumeration of Kenyans during the national population census that begins next Saturday. President Kenyatta assured Kenyans of their security during the census exercise,” said State House in a tweet, which has since been deleted.
The earlier announcement came ten days after Acting Treasury minister, Ukur Yatani, said he had embarked on plans to have August 26 set aside as a public holiday in a bid to give Kenyans ample time to participate in the national census.
“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 National Census begins on the night of August 24 and ends on August 31.
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.
