ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq’s Ministry of Planning said it needs a budget in order to acquire specialized technological equipment and training in order to conduct an overdue national census that is supposed to be done this year.
“Among the basic requirements for the census is the provision of tablets, as we need 130,000 tablets. This requires contracting with international companies to provide these devices with special specifications, as well as training enumerators, who number about 130,000,” ministry spokesperson Abdul Zahra al-Hindawi told Rudaw on Saturday.
“We need to establish a national center for data processing,” he added.
Iraq has not conducted a full census since 1987. Its latest one, in 1997, counted 19 million Iraqis, but it excluded the Kurdistan Region. A separate count put the population of the three Kurdish provinces at 2.8 million.
Hindawi said the planning ministry is ready to complete the requirements for the census once it is allocated funds in the federal budget. The government has not passed a budget for the past two years. Negotiations for the 2023 budget have been ongoing for several months.
Iraq has been discussing carrying out a new census for years that should contribute to the resolution of historical problems like Baathist-era Arabization, the status of disputed Kirkuk, which is claimed by both the federal Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), and the size of the KRG’s share of federal funds.
A census planned for 2020 was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Iraq’s population is an estimated more than 43 million.
“Among the basic requirements for the census is the provision of tablets, as we need 130,000 tablets. This requires contracting with international companies to provide these devices with special specifications, as well as training enumerators, who number about 130,000,” ministry spokesperson Abdul Zahra al-Hindawi told Rudaw on Saturday.
“We need to establish a national center for data processing,” he added.
Iraq has not conducted a full census since 1987. Its latest one, in 1997, counted 19 million Iraqis, but it excluded the Kurdistan Region. A separate count put the population of the three Kurdish provinces at 2.8 million.
Hindawi said the planning ministry is ready to complete the requirements for the census once it is allocated funds in the federal budget. The government has not passed a budget for the past two years. Negotiations for the 2023 budget have been ongoing for several months.
Iraq has been discussing carrying out a new census for years that should contribute to the resolution of historical problems like Baathist-era Arabization, the status of disputed Kirkuk, which is claimed by both the federal Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), and the size of the KRG’s share of federal funds.
A census planned for 2020 was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Iraq’s population is an estimated more than 43 million.
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