Unicef pushes for proper data

RESOURCE challenges in the provision of maternal health care delivery, education and child support programmes have been attributed to poor data collection and Unicef has urged government to prioritise data collection if it is to strategically place services.
In her first trip to the country, the Assistant Secretary General to the UNICEF Deputy Director, Fatoumata Ndiaye said data is fundamental to any strategy.
Ndiaye and Karin Hulshof, UNICEF’s Regional Director for East-Asia and the Pacific visited the ncountry for two days travelling to Goroka and Aziana village of Obura in the Wonenara district.
They also met with Prime Minister Peter O’Neil.
“Without accurate data, making policies becomes very, very difficult.
And data should be linked up with budget and accountability,” Ndiaye said.
The visit revealed the need for government to properly collect and collate data.
“For the government to plan if there are going to be more schools, we need to know where is the density of the population, we need to know how many children are supposed to be living there, so the schools can be built in the right size and we don’t have a student teacher ratio of 100 students with one teacher…so there has to be data accrual.”
To help government, UNICEF will strengthen its in-house capacity and make capacity available to the national bureau of statistics and other places where it’s needed.
“We were talking about schools, a million more children are in school, so what do we know about those schools? We know very little. Are there teachers at school in every village? Do the children have textbooks?
Is there a toilet so that girls who want to do menstrual hygiene management can actually go to a toilet?
Is there running water? We know very little.”
Proper data makes it easier for UN agencies and donors to assist when needed.
“When you go and you sit in front of a committee and you have to advocate for your budget, you need the information to say, look we need to put our money here because these are the many cases that we have and they have not been decreasing in the
last years and we have a high rate of having those cases.”
However, Ndiaye says government has made it clear that the efficient collation of data should be a focus.
“It’s clear that the commitment and the necessity of having good information on what is most important, what we should prioritise, it was clear in our conversations that we have to prioritise malaria, TB – these are huge problems so the budget has to come with that.”
Despite the existing challenges, PNG, Ndiaye says has made progress highlighting the Gender Act, free health services and free tuition.
However, communities still need the provision of services like immunisation, maternal health care and access to education.
“PNG is a magnificent country but there are places which are difficult to service where immunisation is lagging behind and some of other services are lagging behind.”
Hulshof adds child protection is the same with data not readily available.
“There is an enormous gap in data, so if we look at how many children are out of school, if you don’t know a very clear estimate, very precise, how many children live in Papua New Guinea, where do they live, it also becomes difficult to know how many are out of school. They can count the ones already in school but they still don’t know how many are out of school.”
Data, she says helps establish a true picture of the situation in PNG communities.
“So we are clear on how many children are exactly in school, what are the learning outcomes, what have they learnt, if they are in class four, do they really know how to read and write. It’s very important that we do know how many people are where because if we are to bring services to everyone you need to know do we bring it for ten people, hundred people, 1000 people, 10,000 people.”
Ndiaye acknowledged that PNG is different to other places.
“Other places are easier to access, easier to collect data, you have a wonderful country, beautiful in a way that is not seen elsewhere but you also have the challenge of being extremely difficult to access, the communities are so dispersed. They are in the middle of a forest, they are down a hill and up a mountain, so collecting data in that instance is not easy at all.”
“The advantage now is that we are in 2016 and technology exists and in our own accountability, in our own systems we need to step up our game in the area of data – the UN as a whole and bring in benchmarks and what we’ve learnt too actively support government’s work in data collection.”

•  Story and pictures are courtesy of Click Pacific and Click TV.