National statistics office to be centre of all data collection: PM

NATIONAL Statistics Office will be made the centre for all data collected in the country, Prime Minister James Marape says.
He was asked in Parliament yesterday what the Government was doing about the village record books and data system which was launched in 2017.
“We will embrace this path of data collectors at the ward which will become part of this data collection in the districts and local level government (LLGs) structures,” Marape said.
“We just launched the 2020 Census that can cost up to K200 million and we had the NID that consumed over K200 million and the common roll update that continues to consume a substantial chunk of money, and these have become events, not systematic collection of data.
“Our country is very deficient with good data and systematic collection of data that can be collated into better use for the planning of our country.
Marape said the Government should over-sight and set the direction and policy guide to allow many of these programmes to be raised in the provinces and run in the districts.
“One of which is this data collection for our census.
“Waigani will not effectively know how many people are in our 6,300 wards throughout the country,” he said.
“Collection of population data must be an ongoing exercise as part of our activities every time.
“This is not a small thing; it goes to the core of planning exactly what we need to give to the people as far as services are concerned.”