Lack of funds delay preparation

By MICHELLE AUAMOROMORO
PREPARATORY activities for Census 2020 are not coming on as expected due to a shortfall in funding from the Government, acting national statistician John Igitoi says.
Igitoi said the office expected K50 million from the state for the exercise but only received K15 million last week.
The National Statistics office expected the funds to be given in January and February.
“For March, the funds were to be given very early but we just received it last week,” Igitoi said.
“We expected about K50 million but only K15 million was given and just imagine the magnitude of the work that we are going to be doing.
“We need to know the number of houses in all corners of the country before we can send our officers to those different locations.
“We also need to print questionnaires, training manuals, coding manuals and all these things have to be prepared in large quantities.
“Those tasks were not done quickly because of the little funds we are receiving from the Government.”
Igitoi said there were areas of the census that they could cut depending on the funds.
He also said there were areas they could not cut because the quality of the data could not be compromised.
“The data that we are going to collect is very important because data is information,” he said.
“When we understand the data, we are able to provide proper legislation for the country and we are also able to provide proper policies and strategies.”
Igitoi said the NSO understood the current economic situation in the country and the limited resources the Government had in terms of funding.
“We cannot dwell on the funding so we came up with some strategic action plans,” he said.
These action plans include getting provincial governments to help meet the cost of the census.
Western, Morobe, East New Britain and West New Britain have already signed agreements with NSO.