Tema, – The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), Tema West Municipality has upscaled enthusiasm among residents to participate in the ongoing 2021 Population and Housing Census.
Mr. Fidel Bortey, NCCE Tema West Director told the Ghana News Agency in an interview that, the Commission rolled-out series of public engagements to educate the residents on the need to participate in the exercise.
He said activities hit the upper scale with civic advocacy which started with the 30-day count-down to Census night and subsequently “we continue to marshal the public to participate in the census”.
In that regard, Mr. Bortey said giving information to the numerators was a civic duty to ensure the nation had adequate data to plan, and so citizens should see the exercise as their civic responsibility to Ghana.
Mr. Bortey particularly asked people to volunteer information on Persons With Disability (PWDs) so that government could make adequate allocations for them.
Dr. Ernest Kwame Affum, the District Field Officer for Tema West, also explained to the GNA “What we want people to open their doors and gates to receive us, if you doubt the identity of any of the enumerators check their details”.
Dr Affum said the Ghana Statistical Services (GSS) had put in place a hot line that one could call and verify the identity of the enumerators, and the service had ensured that the enumerators had ID cards, reflector Jackets, and other materials that identified them.
“We are doing this not for the enumerators or the government but for ourselves, and the data that would be collected would be for the sole purpose of the GSS to analyse and give us something as a country to plan with.
“Please don’t insult our enumerators or pour water on them; don’t open your dogs on them,” he said.
Dr Affum encouraged enumerators to be patient with the respondents because they would encounter people with different attitudes.
“We want to achieve complete coverage, meaning that we want all persons within the Tema West Municipality to be enumerated within the two-week period; we also want quality data, so we don’t want anyone to cut corners; we don’t want anyone to jump structures or any persons within any households,” he warned.
Dr. Affum appealed to everyone not to tell lies, which was against the law, but to give the right statistics for government to have the right data to manage the country.
He said, “We all want to live in a civilized society, we all want to see development in our various communities; nations that have advanced used data to manage their country and they have data on almost anything that their people are doing. So this exercise is important.”
Source: Ghana News Agency
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