2010 CENSUS TO EMPLOY 50,000

The 2010 population census which will begin in July is expected to recruit about 50,000 people including teachers, municipal and district assemblies, youth among others to be trained nationwide for the exercise.

Dr Grace Bediako, Government Statistician

Recruitment forms are being reviewed for applicants who will be expected to fill the recruitment forms on line while all census forms including the questionnaire will be ready for printing by mid of April.

The decision to fill the forms on line is to prevent people from printing the forms to be sold to interested applicants.

This was disclosed by the head of the Cartographic Section and member of the Census Coordinating Team, Mr Kofi Agyemang Duah, at the inauguration of the Central Regional census implementation committee at Cape Coast on Thursday.

The setting up of the committee is to decentralise the management of the 2010 census programme for the best outcomes.

Mr Duah noted that this year’s census will cover all persons and living quarters such as school buildings and kiosks within the borders of Ghana and also include all infants, children, sick as well as the mentally challenged.

He added that the census will provide up to date socio-economic data for planning at both the national and sub-national levels including data for newly created districts, provide basic indicators for tracking government developmental policies on education, health and housing as well as provide indicators to track the progress of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Mr Duah further added that the exercise will also provide the Electoral Commission (EC) with the necessary data for any revision of electoral areas and constituencies.

It will also give the country the opportunity to update its national sampling frame.

According to him, all is set for the smooth implementation of the exercise as cartographic field work has been completed for all 170 districts while 36,403 enumeration areas in 169 districts have so far been compiled out of the 37,000 expected.

He hinted that 104,399 localities in the 169 districts have been compiled out of about 105,000 expected, indicating that office cartographic work is also expected to be completed by the end of April.

He said the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) expects to count about 24.5 Ghanaians over that of 18,912,079 in 2000.

The Government Statistician, Dr Grace Bediako, said significant progress has been made since the fourth quarter of 2008 towards this year’s census.

She said the three main national level committees namely the census planning committee, the technical advisory committee and the publicity and education committee have been inaugurated while the field component of the cartography and mapping exercise have been completed.

She said her outfit was drawing from governmental and non governmental institutions as well as individual experts to constitute the crop of experts for the census machinery needed to undertake the exercise while it also taps the wide range of skills from all various segments of the society.

She called on communities, institutions, individuals and groups as well as development partners to join hands with the GSS to make the exercise a truly national exercise.

The Central Regional Minister, Mrs Ama Benyiwa Doe, in a speech read on her behalf said government is determined to have the fifth post independence population census conducted in the latter part of this year and charged MMDAs to participate actively to ensure its effective implementation.

She stated that the census will be used to monitor and evaluate important national development programmes such as the national identification system and the National Health Insurance Scheme.

Mrs Benyiwa Doe pointed out that government is faced with many challenges on getting the country to move forward and urged the committee members to manage the resources that would be released to them for the census programme judiciously.

She pledged the regional coordinating council’s support in the implementation of the census programme to ensure its successful implementation.

STORY: FROM MAGDALENE SEY, CAPE COAST