RSSeNEWS to be determined...

Final preparations are now underway for the Malaysian census, due to begin on 6 July and run till 22 August, with the inital release of 2010 data planned for November.

In total, 3,000 supervisors and 26,000 enumerators will be canvassing an estimated population of 29m people in about 7.5m living quarters. The country's chief statistician Datuk Wan Ramlah Wan Abd Raof says she is determined to count everyone: "Even if it is a homeless man living under a bridge or an addict living in an abandoned building, we will cover them."

The population is a mix of ethnic and dialect groups, and includes the remote, isolated states of Sabah and Sarawak. So the Census department is seeking support from the Information Ministry, the Federal Territories and Urban Wellbeing Ministry, the Department of Orang Asli Affairs and the Federal Special Task Force on illegal immigrants in Sabah.

Furthermore, the population is increasingly mobile and, in line with UN guidance, Malaysia is switching from a de facto census – where everyone is counted regardless of their citizenship or tenure of stay in the country – to a de jure count, which includes non-citizens who have been resident for at least six months.

Enumerators and supervisors are being put through a rigorous training programme that covers practical issues such as map reading and safety measures, plus cultural matters including interviewing techniques, dressing and manners. The Census department has set minimum qualifications for workers. In some districts these include language and dialect skills and the possession of personal tansport.

A number of new canvassing techniques will be used. These include the e-census and a drop-off and pick-up (Dopu) census kit, which will be delivered to about 150,000 urban households where workers are out during the daytime.

According to Wan Ramlah, the Dopu will facilitate counting those "who refused or somehow did not participate in the previous censuses … This time, they can fill up the census form on their own, put it back into the bag, hang it outside the gate, call our enumerator and it will be picked up," she said.

New measures to ensure data quality will also be introduced. To reduce transcription errors, for the first time all completed forms will be scanned rather than re-keying the data. Once the count is completed, the department will run a series of randon samples to check data quality.