Record books vital, says Basil

By HELEN TARAWA
VILLAGE record books will go a long way in helping the 2020 Census, Minister for National Planning and Monitoring Sam Basil says.
Basil, who officiated at the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the PNG Civil and Identify registry office and two districts, Mul-Baiyer and Wapenamanda, yesterday, said the record books would enable each community to record their number of people including births and deaths. “We’ve got money budgeted this year to print new books,” Basil said.
“From our records, there are only 91 for Mul-Baiyer. The balance will be distributed later.
“We will also distribute another 90 to 100 to Wapenamanda and we will distribute to other districts as well.
“With the record books that we will be presenting today, Mul-Baiyer MP and his team will be presented to each wards and the opening of bank accounts.
“They will register births and deaths. The ward recorder must record the oldest person in the village to the youngest baby or child.”
Basil said in the case of the records for deaths, the recorder would register deaths, including those sent in from other provinces to their villages for burial.
He said the village recorder would use the same book for the record of deaths but would create another running page to keep account of deaths from other provinces and districts sent to their villages. “Whatever records we have from births to deaths, once we minus the deaths from the births, that will be our national census figures at hand,” Basil said.
“These books are very important and the Department of Local Level Government will formulate and also send another ward record book to register all the other information such as economic activities.
“If every ward employs this book, then there is no need to carry out national Census every year because all the information we want are in these books.
“We will come up with a scheme where at the end of the year, every councillor will have to report to their council managers the summary of the activities that took place in terms of new arrivals and departures.
“The balance will be submitted to the district administrations to pass onto the provincial administration to collate and send to the National Statistics Office,” Basil said.