The last truck carrying census materials essential to carry out the nation-wide population count left the warehouse in Yangon on 26 March 2014. The warehouse witnessed bee-hive of activities over the past few weeks with loading and shipping of over 800 tons of census materials destined to various corners of Myanmar, covering all the 330 townships.
The materials mostly for publicity and enumeration included questionnaires, census handbooks, key messages, all these are in 10 languages and pamphlets in 17 languages, plus posters all of which have been disbursed nationwide as part of the Myanmar publicity campaign to inform the country on the upcoming census. The materials are an essential part of preparations to ensure the census proceeds smoothly.
An estimated 604 tons of other materials mostly questionnaires, instructions manuals, clipboards, caps, hand fans, pencils, pencil sharpeners, erasers, permanent markers, etc., have also been handed out to the approximately 120,000 enumerators and supervisors last week upon completion of their week long training sessions in time for the upcoming census.
U Win Myint, Deputy Director at Department of Population has overseen this major assignment, together with a very dedicated and hard-working team. It entailed the colossal logistical task of ensuring that all the census materials are packed and transported to right correct locations and townships across Myanmar.
"Every package is weighed and recorded by officers of the Department of Population before it is loaded onto a waiting truck and transported to its destination," said U Win Myint. He also explained how every single package regardless of its content and size, is carefully labeled with the name of which the state, district, and township . "Each package is labeled for tracking purposes. Particularly for distribution as many of the census items in one truck are meant for various locations," he added.
A second warehouse located in Nay Pyi Taw, the nation's capital, has also finished distributing its stock of materials.
The census will take place from 29th March to 10 April 2014.
