Statistician General of Statistics Sierra Leone Thursday disclosed that over US$16 million will be spent in conducting both the demographic and health survey and population and census survey.

Mohamed King-Koroma told newsmen at the weekly Ministry of Information press briefing that demographic and health survey will be carried out this year with the population and census survey slated for December 2014.

According to Koroma, demographic and health survey will target health, age, education and sex, among others.

"Over US$16 million will be spent in conducting both the demographic and health survey and the population and census survey. The demographic and health survey will be used to measure the characteristics of the population and test the impact of the free healthcare initiative which has been in existence for about three years now," he stated.

He maintained that the pre-test of the instruments will last for two weeks whilst the survey itself will last for 69 days with US$3,129,538 to be utilized for the entire process.

"We have been urged by stakeholders to disaggregate the data at district level which was not done in the past. This venture needs larger employment of people. Let me take this opportunity to urge the media to propagate the message so that money will be galvanised for the survey," he added.