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A statistician from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) says that people who refuse to participate in the 2021 digital population and housing census or who provide false data will be sentenced to 12 months in jail.
Speaking on The Probe, Professor Samuel Kobina Annim said that everyone is mandated to participate in the exercise to ensure that the country has accurate data with which to operate.
“There is no place for one person or group of people in Ghana to abstain from taking the census. In fact, Clause 54 of the Statistical Services Act (2019) is titled Offenses and Penalties and obliges everyone in Ghana to willingly provide us with accurate data once we get close to the person, ”he said.
However, Professor Annim told Emefa Apawu that the Service hardly complies with the law when people are not willing to participate in the exercise.
He said the GSS would prefer to convince residents who have doubts about the process through education, publicity and advocacy of the need to be counted.
“At this time we would like to find people who for one reason or another will not want to participate in the census and we are optimistic that once we do the education, once we tell them why this census is important, we will urge all of them to go up. on board for the activity “.
Professor Annim said that if people are not yet willing to participate in the process, the law will have to go into effect.
He added that the service is doing everything possible to ensure that everyone in the country is counted during the census.
“As I indicated, clause 54 is crimes and punishment and there it says that someone who gives wrong information or refuses to give information is liable to no more than 12 months in prison and 200 units of punishment.”
2021 Population Census
The 2021 Population Census is expected to begin on Sunday, June 27. The date has been approved by the Presidency and the Directing Committee of the National Census.
The 2021 Population and Housing Census (APS), with the slogan “You count, you count”, will provide the country with the opportunity to collect reliable and comprehensive data on citizenship to transform the economy for sustainable development.
Census Night will be the reference point for all the information to be collected on the population and will mark the beginning of the enumeration phase of the 2021 Census exercise.
The GSS is the lead agency for conducting the census and has divided the country into 51,921 enumeration areas to ensure easy geospatial data collection across the 260 metropolitan, municipal, and district assemblies.
