Aka: Census details out

THE National Statistical Office will release provisional figures for the 2011 national population and housing census next month.
The assurance came from national statistician Joseph Aka during Tuesday’s Roger Hauofa’s talk-back show on FM 100 in Port Moresby.
Aka said the Gulf, Central, East Sepik, Manus and East New Britain provisional counts were ready after a week of data entry and the office would have the other 17 provinces’ data processed before they were released all at once.
He said the office recruited an additional 80 staff to help in the checking phase of the census forms and for data entry.
He said the final and detailed national and provincial population with the socio-economic reports would come out in 2013.
Census director, Hajily Kele said on the radio talk-back show that the population census was about the total count of the country’s population.
She said taking into account the physical geography and lack of basic infrastructure in PNG, the census was successfully conducted.
She said after the provisional figures, the detailed reports on the census and the final population count at the census unit level would be released.
Kele said the census was now in the data processing stage, which was the longest phase that usually “takes more than a year to complete but the outcome the public is interested in will definitely be made available”.