Home

Farming communities not to be left out when the census 2022 gets under way

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Farming communities will not be left out when officials from Statistics South Africa head out to take stock of population growth levels as the 2022 census gets under way.

Statistics South Africa’s Nthabiseng Chakela Situlo says the provincial leg in the Free State of the Census 2022 will start tonight by counting farmers, farm dwellers, the homeless and those in transit as well as those living in special dwelling institutions and hospitals.

“And when it comes to the farming community, we have been engaging the Free State Farmers Union. We trained them on the online registration, so that they should also register their farm workers and prepare themselves for their actual count when we start of the 3rd until the 28th of February,” says Nthabiseng Chakela Situlo.

Free State Agriculture says they have been working with enumerators from Stats SA to encourage farmers to register online to be counted.

Stats SA says they intend to release this year’s counting as early as possible unlike in previous years.

Free State Agriculture CEO, Jack Armour says they have done a lot of ground work with Stats SA for Census 2022.

“And this information is critical for the whole of South Africa, for not just agriculture but all the sectors. We need to know where people are living; what their living standards are. Government policies are based on how people’s (living) standards have been improved. And this census aims at capturing living standards and earnings and how many family members are staying in the households and that kind of stuff. It’s critical information for policy formulation. So, we urge all our members, all households in South Africa to register for this critical survey,” says Jack Armour.

Census Free State | Farming communities will be included:

Recently, farmers in the province were dealt a huge blow by veld fires and floods.

Farmer Mponeng Lentoro says they hope the Census taking place will help alleviate some of the challenges they face.

“If its not the rain, the drought, it is veld fires. You find that because of the sun, there is too much fire and there’s nothing that animals can graze on. So, now it is too much and then there is mosquitoes. We need to inject our animals and yesterday, I bought medication which is over R12 000.”

Stats South Africa will be visiting farms across the Free State as part of its data collection.

VIDEO: All system go for census 2022

Author

MOST READ