The Denkyembour District Assembly located in the Eastern Region has launched the 30 days to census night with full of enthusiastic support from the entire district.
The program was graced by Nananom from different traditional areas, Representative of the District Chief Executive, Representative of Member of Parliament, the coordinating director, security, heads of department, district census officers, the Media, and other stakeholders.
Addressing the meeting, the District Census Officer Collins Agameli speaking on behalf of the government statistician and chief census Officer, Professor Samuel Kobina Annim said within a three year period to the census night scheduled for 27th June 2021, the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), with the guidance and oversight of the National Census Steering Committee, national committee for publicity, education and advocacy, national census technical advisory committee and the board of the GSS, have been able to build systems, pool together diverse expertise, mobilise resources, and test and document strategies that underlie the successful conduct of Ghana’s first fully digital PHC.
He added that, the main goal of the census is to achieve complete coverage of all structures and persons in Ghana, which dovetails with the Leave no one behind agenda of the sustainable development goals. Technological advances, process digitalization and enhanced and effective training, being the hallmarks of Ghana 2021 PHC, have been integrated into the census process to ensure the production of quality data.
Furthermore, Collins Agameli noted that, in the next three days, from Monday 31st May to Wednesday, 9th June is scheduled for training of enumerators and supervisors in all the 272 statistical district in the country, listing of structures will be done throughout the country from 13-25th June 2021. The scheduled fourteen day duration of data collection which starts the evening of the census night is referred to as the census period from 28th June to 11th July, 2021.
The District Coordinating Director, Mr Mark Addo revealed at the meeting that, Ghana has fairly consistent in conducting census every 10 year since 1960 to count and understand it’s population size, structure and dynamics. As aware, population and housing census provide data on sex, age, births and deaths, migration, what we do for a living, where we live, the quality of our housing, and access to public services, health and education. The creation of district, Constituencies and Region by successive governments is based mainly on census data.
In view of this, metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAS) fully support the census because it will address the various data gaps needed for effective planning of sectoral programmes at the district level.
In his remarks, he says the ministry of local government, decentralization and rural development through the MMDAs has supported the allocation of storage facilities in all the 272 statistical districts in the country and they will continue to support the GSS to ensure the conduct of a successful census through the District Census Implementation Committee.
The chief of Akwatia, Osaberima Kofi Boateng III also added and appealed to the general public to be more involved in this exercise.
He said, the government has trained professional enumerators and supervisors which works with confidentiality in the exercise.
