By Faridah;
The National population and housing census exercise will not take place in August as earlier planned. Uganda bureau of statics says it is not feasible because a number of pre- census activities like procurement of the tablets, publicity, recruitment and training of census staff plus developing digital maps are still pending.
Uganda bureau of statistics has secured funds amounting to 176 billion shillings from government of Uganda to conduct the National Population and Housing census this year.
In September 2022 cabinet approved the population and Housing census to be carried out by the Uganda National Bureau of statics in August 2023.
The bureau is continuing with various pre-enumeration activities and some which have been completed include geo-mapping of household and enumeration area boundaries at 62%, the census pilot has been conducted and the data from the exercise is being analyzed.
“We are saying we want to know where everyone is ,so the ongoing exercise we are doing which is called mapping,we are picking reference coordinates for every house hold as long as its occupied so that when we are doing the census there we have are full listing for all the people ” Godfrey Nyabongo the Deputy Executive Director UBOS said.
However, this is going to be the first technologically driven census conducted the delay in procurement of the tablets estimated at a tune of 132 billion shillings being handles by the UN has caused postponement in the date to carrying out the exercise.
“The key issue here is procurement of the tablets and where we are ,we are seeing August not being feasible but we are making a report to the ministry of finance and cabinet to get guidance and best options under this circumstance” the Deputy Executive Director UBOS said.
The bureau has recruited 120,000 people to do data entry from the field and the public should expect the results to be gotten faster than when they used to do census using data on paper.
“Previously after we collect the data on paper, we set up a data centre- and recruit so many people to start entering the data for so long , this time the difference is the number we recruited is bigger as they carry out the census they are entering the data, this is a bigger number of about 120,000” Nyabongo said.
Meanwhile on the issue of the three applications filed by some of UBOS former employers like Henry Munaaba Dhikusooka the bureau clarifies that contracts of the executive director and the board are still on and running.
The people posing to be whistle blowers were dismissed for misconduct from the bureau in May 2023. The bureau therefore refutes all the false and malicious propaganda from the disgraced staff.
