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Census central in planning

 

National Statistics Office (NSO) has said the population and housing census (PHC) is an important exercise as its results are used for formulating government policies in every 10 years.

Commissioner of NSO, Mercy Kanyuka said this during the week when she opened a six day training of enumerators for 2018 PHC held at Lilongwe Girls Secondary school in Lilongwe.

Kanyuka: It is important

She pointed out that the data collected would help government to plan development initiatives and guide in allocating various social services appropriately.

“Government is very keen and has shown total commitment in ensuring that census is conducted successfully,” the Commissioner explained.

Kanyuka said 20,000 enumerators are undergoing training sessions for PHC which is beginning on September 3, 2018 and are expected to be equipped with necessary skills and knowledge so that they collect accurate data during enumeration phase of the exercise.

“NSO developed a data collection application tool called Computer Assisted Personal Interview (Capi) which will be used in the census instead of paper based questionnaire. The total and the whole census process were pre-tested and piloted, the results were prefect,” she added,

Kanyuka explained that NSO developed various media packages and are currently running to educate people about the Census.

The Commissioner stated: “We completed hiring of 80 district supervisors, 500 control centre supervisors and 20,000 enumerators including some on reserve in case some enumerators do not show up,” she said.

Kanyuka thanked government and development partners like Department for International Development (DfID), United Sated Agency for International Development (Usaid), governments of Germany, Norway and Ireland and United Nations agencies for the financial support provided towards this year’s census.

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) country representative, Won Hong urged the enumerators to be responsible during the exercise and that accurate data collection was the most important thing during their 21 day work.

She said as enumerators they should be proud to be part of the country’s history involving collection of vital data which government would largely depend on its implementation of its development programmes.

“We believe that after this training the quality of data collection from the exercise will be perfect. We are appealing to you to be serious in your new challenge and you should aim at coming up with accurate information for the country to use,” Hong explained.

 

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