Census Questions Raise Suspicion: Routine Procedure or Tax Disclosure?

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[size=52]Census Questions Raise Suspicion: Routine Procedure or Tax Disclosure?[/size]

[size=45]The questions set by the Ministry of Planning for the population census scheduled for next November raise suspicions about their content.
The Ministry of Planning trained more than 100,000 teachers and instructors during the summer vacation, who will carry out counting tasks during the general population and housing census in Iraq.
One of the teachers participating in the census teams said, “Some of the questions in the census are questionable. I do not know why they ask about phones, cars, or private property, and determining the location of the house on GPS, while the census is supposed to include counting individuals and families and knowing the population growth.”
He added, “There is a crisis of trust between the citizen and the government, so most families will not disclose their real assets and properties, claiming that the government wants to impose taxes.”
A wide controversy has been raised about the questions included in the census form, and bloggers on Facebook circulated this form with great sarcasm. Abdul Khader Ne’ma wrote that “the census questions should include knowing the number of educated people and unemployed graduates in the family, and the number of children who have dropped out of school due to its high costs.”
He pointed out that “the form counts properties, washing machines, and all household appliances, even phones and internet service. This is not a census, it is a tax statement par excellence.”
According to the Ministry of Planning, the census form includes 70 questions, covering 11 diverse axes related to the characteristics of an individual’s life in the sectors of health, education, work, housing, and services, with the aim of obtaining accurate information about the number of families and residents in each home to know the educational level of each citizen, as well as identifying the diseases that families suffer from.
For his part, the spokesman for the Ministry of Planning, Abdul Zahra Al-Hindawi, said that “the census form does not initially include any questions about income, whether for the individual or the family, but with regard to counting durable goods, it has nothing to do with taxes or any other procedures, and it is not mandatory either.”
“We will take samples from the community and ask them about these goods, meaning that not all families are included in this question,” Abdul Zahra added, noting that “this census aims to measure the level of well-being and the level of poverty rate in the country and to provide an image of the size of existing devices and goods, and based on that we can develop a vision and a future import policy through which we can determine the size of the electrical energy required for the population according to the annual growth rates and other details related to other economic and developmental aspects.”
The planning spokesman insists that “this census is far from any procedures related to any case of doubt, it is only an overview of the reality to draw up strategic policies and solve the problems facing this reality.”
Last May, the National Advisor for the General Population Census, Mahdi Al-Alaq, confirmed the cancellation of the question about nationality in the general census form, noting that “all the procedures that were achieved in 2010 stopped completely after insisting on raising issues related to nationality and disputed regions,” according to what was reported by the official newspaper.
In addition, crisis management expert Ali Jabbar confirms that “the process of conducting a population census for a country like Iraq after an absence of more than 27 years is a new process and a new concept at the level of the state and society’s performance and how it deals with it.”
“The statistical process in all countries is comprehensive of many terms and statistics, starting with the number of people and their types, whether male or female, the social nature and standard of living, and many numbers and statistical analyses that follow this type of census, which includes outputs about the level of education, health status, family size, and changes in the community environment, including the provision of public services to individuals and how to distribute them and allocate appropriate financial allocations,” Jabbar added.
He finds that “after 27 years in which the census was completely absent, it has become clear that there is a lack of culture in confronting it, so the Ministry of Planning needs to exert intensive efforts to educate society about this census and its desired goals.”
Jabbar believes that “the fear that citizens have about imposing taxes is misplaced, as the state is going to impose taxes, but at other levels the census process will not be one of them,” adding that “in a country like Iraq, community fear is justified due to the lack of trust in the executive institution.”
He stresses that “the pattern and behavior of statistics has changed internationally in a very big way. In most countries of the world, statistics are electronic and include a lot of accurate and even personal information and data for individuals because they produce a lot of statistical analyses that any executive government needs.”
Jabbar adds that “the Iraqi state, within the administrative chaos of the past years, does not leave the impression that a big change will occur after this census as much as it is important, as the Iraqi state does not rely on statistics, international readings, and solid economic reports in its work.”[/size]
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