Census office setup soon

A separate bureau to coordinate the 2019 National Population and Housing Census operations will be soon be established.

The office will be located within the current National Statistics Office (NSO).

Government Statistician, Douglas Kimi said establishing of the office will happen by next month, November.

He said once the office is establish, there will be a lot of administrative activities, secondment and appointment of staff to be done not only from the NSO but other departments within government to supervise the Census office positions.

Meanwhile, Mr Kimi said since this is a biggest nationwide census survey envisioned to take in records of every citizens no matter what age category and cultural background, it is important that everyone must support and collaborate with the NSO and field officers who will be out in the field for data collection.

He said this is a crucial undertaking to ensure the country have an updated population counts thus collaborative effort and support is indeed appreciative in this regard to guarantee a successful census.

Kimi said unlike other big events in the country like the Election registration which targets only specific age group with other surveys/events, Census is different and the biggest ever occasion as it take record of every individual citizen of a country. The date for the 2019 national census count is yet to be set.

The NSO is also calling on development partners and donors to support the coming 2019 Census in terms of funding and technical assistance.

Also as part of the 2019 census planning and preparatory work, the NSO is currently undertake the Village Resource Survey 2017-2018 and the Household listing exercise.

The VRS has a long history in the NSO.

Initiated in the 1980s, it was then con¬ducted in 1995-1996, then in 2007- 2008 but due to resource constraints the results were only used internally in preparation of the past censuses; the present VRS 2017- 2018 is the fourth one in the series.

The VRS and household listing col¬lects information on services to the village including mapping and also collect information on the location of households by GPS and the number of people per household by gender.

This is the basis for Census enumera¬tion areas (EA) demarcation in 2019.

The survey will play the role of assist¬ing the Solomon Islands Government (SIG) in providing quality data at the village level, which is essential, to see the impact of development, and guide its development efforts and pol¬icy – makers in the future, to improve the livelihood and standard of living for all Solomon Islanders.

The survey now in its final phase and nears completion.

The Solomon Islands Government (SIG) through the Ministry of Finance & Treasury (MoFT) is funding the VRS 2017/18 project.

–SINSO PRESS

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