The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has set Sunday, June 28 as the census night for this year’s Population and Housing Census (PHC).
The night, which falls on the midnight of the said date, will serve as a reference point for the enumeration period, which will be from June 15 to July 15, 2020.
The PHC will involve the official count of each person in the geographical space of Ghana so that every person’s characteristics will feed into the national development planning.
Mr Louis Toboh, Deputy Volta Regional Statistician, who disclosed this on Wednesday during the inauguration of the Ketu South Municipal Census Implementation Committee (MCIC), said the 2020 PHC, the 12th to be conducted in the country since colonial times in 1891, would see an extensive field operation in the data collection effort so that no one was left out.
He touched on the uniqueness of the 2020 Census saying it would be, “heavily depended on technology” by using computer-assisted personal interview, picking Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates for all structures and communities, relying on in-built quality control system to validate collected data and, falling on digitized maps for validating and plotting information of all enumeration areas on maps.
Mr Toboh said the effort is aimed at ensuring, “Ghana’s data systems remain current, updated and relevant to policy and decision making” among other important uses.
Mr Elliot Edem Agbenorwu, the Municipal Chief Executive for Ketu South, who inaugurated the Committee, underscored the importance of the decennial exercise describing it as, “an indispensable governance tool required to ensure that good governance and democracy works.”
He reminded the Committee that the success of the census in the Municipality depended on the extent of their diligence and collaborative work with the four-member municipal technical team and reminded them of the need to own the exercise saying, “our Assembly has been using previous census data for communities in the allocation of our resources.”
Alhaji Yussif Ibrahim, the Municipal Coordinating Director (MCD) and Chairman of the Committee, called on members to do their best to execute the daunting task of spearheading the process in the Municipality trusting their knowledge and experience for a good job.
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