2010 Census To Create 45,000 Jobs

The 2010 Population and Housing Census will create more than 45,000 temporary jobs for the enumerators and supervisors in 36,000 areas across the country.

The project is expected to document vital data on the population and housing in Ghana. Mr Francis Kojo Yankey, a member of the Census Implementation Team, who addressed a three-day workshop for 25 journalists in Ho at the weekend, said preparatory works had been carried out in all the 36,000 enumeration areas (EAs).

The workshop was organised by the Media and Communication Advocacy Network and sponsored by the United Nations Population Fund to build the capacity of the media towards a successful census next year.

The last time a census was held in Ghana was in the year 2000 and the United Nations Statistical Division recommends that a census is held every 10 years to update data on a country’s population, which is crucial for development planning.

Mr Yankey said when recruitment was recently opened at the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) for a pilot census to precede the actual one on November 8 this year, offices of the AMA were inundated with more than 2,000 applications.

In order to ensure that the right people with the right backgrounds were recruited, Mr Yankey said an elaborate application form had been designed to collect enough data from the applicants in order to check their backgrounds before engaging their services.

This is to forestall any situation where individuals with ulterior intentions may apply to serve as enumerators under the project.

Also, as a precaution against past events when enumerators had a stand-off with the Ghana Statistical Service over allowances which threatened to derail the census project, he said applicants would be made to sign agreements before they were engaged.

Mr Yankey also said that for the pilot census, which had been slated for Sunday, November 8, 2009, six districts, whose characteristics were representative of the country, had been selected, demarcation had been done, recruitment of staff was in progress, and that three levels of training for trainers, supervisors and enumerators were to be completed by the end of October.

For his part, Mr Forster K. Agyaho, a member of the Census Implementation Committee, urged the media to help dispel such deep-seated prejudices that the general public hold with regard to censuses.

He also appealed to chiefs and opinion leaders to help the Ghana Statistical Service to achieve accurate and total coverage in next year’s census.

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