Census to cost Sh18.5 billion, Sh3.5 billion for phones

Kenya National Bureau of Statistics Director General Zachary Chege when he appeared before the Constitution Implementation and Oversight Committee on population and housing census at Parliament on Tuesday 27/02/18 [Photo by Boniface Okendo/Standard]

Next year’s population census will cost taxpayers at least Sh18.5 billion, it has emerged. Out of this amount, Sh3.5 billion will be spent to procure smartphones at Sh15, 000 each.

The figure means the country will spend more than double what it spent in the 1999 census in which the country spent about Sh8 billion.