Spend scarce census resources wisely

The National Letters

THE national housing and population census will be conducted in July 2021.
The National Statistical Office (NSO) is currently facing financial constraints to adequately fund its operations in preparation for the actual count.
There are other operations that are required after the count in order to release the population figures.
It is a setback for NSO as it tries to produce timely and quality data for the purpose of evidence-based planning.
The World Statistics Day was recently celebrated by NSO with the theme ‘Connecting the world with data we can trust’, which is ironic to the situation NSO is facing with deficiencies in funding.
This then brings into question the quality of data which we may not trust.
Moreover, current expenditure practices by NSO is not of cost-saving nature as it further depletes limited census funds currently at its disposal.

  •  want to highlight some of these practices to the National Planning Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Sam Basil where census money may have been misapplied including:
  •  UNNECESSARY hire of vehicles by non-essential staff;
  •  FUNDING of recurrent or other activities using funds from Census trust account; and,
  •  UNNECESSARY recruitment of casual staff.
    With census drawing near, it is of utmost priority that NSO conduct itself responsibly when it comes to handling scarce resources.
    For the above reasons, the minister should intervene and correct these malpractices before it is too late.

Keninga
Port Moresby