LOCAL government authorities need to use results of the 2022 Population and Housing Census as reference points in budgetary decision making and planning of development projects.

Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa issued this instruction when opening a training session on the use of the census results to local government activities, involving leaders of Liwale, Nachingwea and Ruangwa districts in Lindi Region in the municipality yesterday.

Distributing census results should be a long-term agenda in council meetings, he stated, urging leaders to lead the way, to sit down and brainstorm on how the results of the national exercise can be used to transform people’s lives and promote investment.

Urging leaders to take note of the fact that a lot of money was spent on the exercise, he said that the region has various investment attractions, so leaders need to market the region.

Residents in the region similarly need to work on linking their houses with the post-code system and ensure that they protect its infrastructure, he said, tasking each local leader to work on sensitising people in their area of representation.

Hamad Hassan Chande, the Treasury deputy minister, said that Tanzania was a role model for conducting a digital census, appealing to executive officers at different levels to properly utilise the census results to plan for development.

This includes preparing, monitoring and evaluation tools in each instance, to which Anne Makinda, the census commissioner said that the 2022 exercise set to identify the number of people, buildings and affixing residential addresses.

Census statistics enable the government to plan and implement development strategies effectively, she said, while Dr Albina Chuwa, the statistician general, had earlier said that out of 61.7m people who were counted, Lindi had 1,194,028 people or roughly 1.2m people.

Kilwa District led with 297,676 people, followed by Nachingwea District with 233,655 people. Ruangwa had 185,573 people counted and Liwale showed 136,505 people, she said.

Nachingwea ward led by having 18,343 people followed by Mbekenyera ward with 16,531 people, Nandagala ward fielding 7,391 persons while Makanjiro ward showed 4,002 people, all for Ruangwa District.

Nachingwea District had 74,738 households, Kilwa showed 72,152 households, Ruangwa next with 60,931 households, Lindi municipality yielding 52,809 units and Mtama 50,708 households counted, while Liwale was least with 35,897 households.

The census is a vital tool for policy makers, economists, planning officers and various stakeholders involved in policy formulation, planning and monitoring project implementation and development as a whole, she added.