East New Britain Province is preparing to host the national census program, scheduled for June 17-30 this year.
The ‘reference night’ is Sunday, June 16, where data collectors will be interviewing people within their households to ensure they are in their designated homes and not in another location.
As per schedule, recruitment of enumerators or data collectors is currently underway in the province and will depend on the workload per ward, which will be confirmed through the listing exercise.
Based on estimates from the 2011 national census, the province is looking at recruiting around 2,374 enumerators to cover the over 300 wards in the province during the two-week census.
According to the ENB Provincial Census Coordinator (PCC) Gideon Towaii, the first phase of the preparation began last year, through training rolled out by the National Statistical Office (NSO) for all the PCCs.
“There are three more workshops to be done, beginning with the NGI regional training of trainers (TOT) in Kavieng, New Ireland Province. So far, we have completed the reviewed Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) between the ENB Provincial Administration and the NSO,” Towaii stated.
He said the MoA will be signed next week by the ENB Provincial Administrator and Legal Officer, which will coincide with the regional training in Kavieng.
“There are three main components identified in the MoA that needed to be reviewed, one being the budget, data sharing and asset,” he explained.
The national government will cover 38 percent of the budget, while the province will cater for the balance of over K6 million for this year’s national census.
In response to this arrangement, the ENB Provincial Administration, through the provincial administrator (PA) and the Census Steering Committee, have come up with a policy paper to seek additional funding for the rollout of the census.
“The national census is done every 10 years and through our discussions with the PA, we are planning to ensure that the province takes on the task of regularly updating the data that we will get from the NSO after this year’s census,” Towaii said.
He said the 2,000-plus enumerators will be issued tablets to input the data they collect during the census.