Census vital for growth: Marape

THE Government intends to deliver a national Census of the highest standard and with the highest integrity of the data that will be secured, Prime Minister James Marape says.
He was responding to Kagua-Erave MP Wesley Raminai, who asked about the Census and the 2022 general elections.
Marape said having a good population data would give the government the necessary tools to plan for better developments and other events, including projects such as the National Identity and Civil Registry.
“In my view 2020 Census takes precedence. A good 2020 Census and a stock-take of our population will give us a secure platform for us to have a nice NID programme rolled out and also a secure basis for a good data base to migrate into the electoral rolls in 2022 elections.
“We like our National Statistical Office (NSO) to be life collectors or population data and other data in the country that will give a correct measure in which we can collate our planning as we go into the future.
“We are only one year away from the national general elections, so I would like to reiterate again that the national Census 2020 takes precedence and the good data we establish and we like to make it simple.”
Marape said NSO’s capacity would be ramped to supervise the standard and they would connect to the districts.
“And district can be a point of collating of data and input and we ensure that the data is the highest standard, and input that we make in the 2020 Census will be live, raw data in which NID is secured.
“NID is a compulsory project and we will ensure every citizen is related to an identity and everything else will be linked to it.
“We will ensure that we deliver the highest standard population census so that we get NID and PNG Electoral Commission to piggy-back on this data,” Marape said.