STATISTICIANS from the National Statistics Office (NSO) are fully prepared to start collecting data of Visitor Arrivals in the Solomon Islands after a refresher course conducted at the office on Friday 12th March 2021.
Florence Walekwate, Grace Perakana and new staff Steward Sopamana are responsible for recording incoming residents, visitors and tourists from overseas at the country’s Henderson International Airport.
They participated in the one day course, facilitated by Chief Statistician Anterlyn Tuzakana.
“It’s an orientation course for our new officer Steward, and a refresher for the others”, Tuzakana said. “The information collected is confidential.”
“It is also an introduction for him to the process of the data collection from entry to analysis, and to familiarize himself with the entry system we use, CSPro,” she added.
A refresher course is held every beginning of the year to remind the officers of their duties and the significance their specific input contributes to the process of collecting the data.
“We are currently affected by the COVID-19, so we only collected data in the first quarter of last year.
“But when the borders re-open, we hope to start working because we are now ready to go.”
Tuzakana highlighted that they will also depend on the Immigration, Quarantine, Customs officers’ cooperation to carry out their duties effectively.
“The quality and accuracy of our data depends on us working cooperatively with each other. The information we collect for our data comes through these other three groups first before reaching us. ”
Meanwhile, Steward, who majored in Economics and Statistics at the University of the South Pacific has high expectations and looking forward to learning more. It is only his second week at the NSO and he is still getting used to the new environment.
“I completed my studies in 2019 and the whole of last year I did nothing. Then the vacancy for a statistician came out. I applied and I got in.
“The refresher was great. To familiarize myself with the software CSPro is important. It’s the software everyone else in the office uses.
“The most interesting part of the work for me will be meeting the people from different countries at the International airport. We are going to interact with them, so we must be friendly.”
The National Statistics Office releases the Visitor Arrivals bulletin quarterly every year. -SINSO Press
