Former census boss says 2011 a disaster

 By ALISON ANIS

FORMER director of national population and housing census Bernard Kiele has described this year’s enumeration process as a disaster.

He said the National Statistical Office had lost the plot and cheated the people of the nation by the unnecessary delays in getting actual census data on time and in an efficient manner.

“What we have now is a national disgrace. Never in the history of national census have we let the census run for as long as a month from the night of census,” Kiele said.

In response, 2011 census director Hajily Kele said the census exercise was progressing well for most provinces despite the negative comments from the public and the minor logistical problems.

Kiele, who was director for 2006 demographic health survey  and the 2008 household income and expenditure survey, said none of the technical teams involved including the national census boss were qualified or experienced to conduct the actual census.

“NSO has got rid of all the experienced people including technical experts from overseas and replaced them with untrained and inexperienced people. 

“That is why it (census) has become a disaster,” he said.

He said only 90 % of the country’s population was supposed to be counted within a week from the night of the census.

But he said the process had now become de-facto because instead of asking where the person was on the night of July 10, the census night, the interviewers were asking something else.

“Usually a census takes three days of enumerations and two days for the mop-up exercise. Now we have a census taking over a month. 

“In terms of statistics or having a data, this could be used with a lot of caution,” Kiele said.

Kele said there was an extension of mop-up exercise for all provinces that had not completed their enumeration.

“Right now five local level governments out of the 334 LLGs in the country are still into their training while others have already done their enumeration and are doing mop-up exercises,” Kele said.

She said they were still waiting to receive completed forms of enumerations from the pro­vinces.