NSO, WHP ink agreement

By LORRAINE JIMAL
WESTERN Highlands is the 15th province to sign a memorandum of agreement (MoA) with the National Statistics Office to help with the census project.
The agreement was signed by NSO’s John Igitoi and Western Highlands deputy administrator James Papa Ulg yesterday with both parties agreeing to work together to meet the cost of the project.
Acting national statistician Igitoi said the census was an expensive exercise, was resource intensive and would require provincial governments to work with his office on the project because the information collected would belong to the province.
“We need to share the cost because the Government does not have the required funding that we requested to implement the census programme,” he said.
Igitoi said it was important for the NSO to take of the exact numbers of people in each province to ensure everyone was captured in the national development plans.
“For development’s sake, we need to know what sort of things they are doing, whether they are excessing basic services or not,” he said.
Igitoi said he was confident that the provincial governments would use the information to craft development plans and be able to determine where services were needed the most.
Ulg thanked National Statistics Office for appointing two provincial coordinators – one for urban and one for rural.
He pledged to support the officers in terms of logistics, transport and sundry needs to carry out census work in the province.
Ugl said data collected from the census would be used in planning and development programmes and policies to develop the province in the years to come.