[ad_1]
Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia
The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), in consultation with the Office of the President, approved Sunday June 27 this year as Census Night.
The date has also been approved by the National Census Steering Committee.
The 2021 Population and Housing Census (APS), with the slogan “You count, you count”, will provide the country 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 collection of geospatial data across the 260 metropolitan, municipal, and district assemblies.
Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, who launched the 100-day countdown to Census Night in Accra on Friday, said the government was determined to build a society based on digital data to transform the national economy.
He said that quality data collection was at the center of good policy making and therefore Ghana would not be left behind in the global digital revolution.
The Vice President emphasized that reliable and complete data on the population will inform the government’s decision in the allocation of resources, the distribution of the education and health infrastructure, as well as to ensure adequate social spending.
The Vice President expressed the government’s commitment to provide adequate resources to the GSS for conducting the Census, and said that from the budget of GHC 521.3 million, it had mobilized and disbursed GHC 449.7 million to the Service.
“We are on the cusp of a technological revolution. Countries are constantly launching new technological applications to improve everyday life, improve public administration, how the government works and how the government offers services to the public.”
“Ghana cannot be left behind in this march of technological innovation,” said the vice president.
In that regard, he said, the government led by Akufo-Addo for the past four years, implemented digital policies and programs, including the Property and Digital Addressing System, the Ghana card registry, the interoperability and payment system, and the Ghana’s digital portal to accelerate the country’s digital revolution agenda.
Conducting the census, he said, was a requirement of Clause 34 of the Ghana Statistical Service Act (Act 1003), which would ensure the collection of digital data on Ghanaians and foreigners, as well as on mobile and non-mobile structures.
About 70,000 computer tablets would be installed for the country’s first digital census data collection exercise and 75,000 field officers across the country.
Professor Samuel Kobina Annim, a government statistician and census director, noted that with the security of logistics and systems, he was ready to begin the 2021 population and housing census on Sunday, June 27, as announced.
He gave a presentation on the status of GSS preparations towards the Census, and said that the launch of 100 days to Census Night would see the Service spearheading national publicity, education and advocacy activities aimed at mobilizing resources, raising awareness stakeholders and develop strategic alliances for a successful exercise.
The National Census should have taken place in 2020, but the Coronavirus pandemic delayed the process.
This year’s census would be the sixth conducted in Ghana since the post-independence era.
The nation conducted the national census in 1960, 1970, 1984, 2000, and 2010.
Since then, the population of Ghana has grown from 6.7 million in 1960 to 24.6 million in 2010 and is currently estimated at 30 million.
