The postponed Population and Housing Census (PHC) for Ghana will be conducted between April and May 2021, the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has announced.
The census originally scheduled for March 15, 2020 was postponed twice due to the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
Speaking at a press conference in Accra on Wednesday, Prof Samuel Kobina Annim said a major activity that would be done prior to the census exercise next year would be to demarcate the country into smaller geographical areas to enable the Service to assign enumerators.
The Government statistician also indicated that 70 per cent of logistics required for the census have been procured adding that “the logistics include tablets, bags, note books and other materials have been acquired and we are optimistic the Service is ready from the logistics point of view.”
He also mentioned that ahead of the census the Service was organising training at four levels for trainers.
They are master, national regional trainers and enumerator and supervisors.
The Government Statistician said his outfit would be training 120 master trainers, 970 national trainers, 6,750 regional trainers who would in turn train 75,000 enumerators and supervisors for the exercise.
He said the GSS was hoping to use the school facilities across the country to train its personnel since students may be on break within the period the census was scheduled for.
“We need facilities to train these 75,000 enumerators and supervisors for which reason we would have to rely on school facilities for these engagements,” he added .
Prof. Annim said the vacation period would also give the Service the opportunity to engage teachers who live within the communities and would be able to play key roles in the exercise.
He said training have begun for the master trainers and that one of the “unique things we are doing is the 2021 census complementary deployment of virtual training.”
He called on Ghanaians to avail themselves to be counted in the upcoming census.
At the last census conducted in 2010, the country’s population stood at 24,658,823, which was indication of a 30.4 per cent increase over the 2000 population figure of 18,912,079, while the current population is estimated to be about 31 million.
BY JEMIMA ESINAM KUATSINU
