Census publication on track

By MATTHEW VARI

Sunday, November 3, 2013 (Sunday Chronicle, PNG)

THE 2011 National Census, is on track for publication- that was the assurance from the Acting National Statistician Roko Koloma from the National Statistics Office (NSO) in response to queries on why it was taking too long.

He said that censuses usually take two years to produce, based on the fact that there was nowhere in the world that there is a perfect census, meaning not everybody is counted.

The statistician pointed out that even a industrialized country like Japan, also did not conduct perfect census.

“In the census process, we ensure that the data that comes in, because as you know- the questionnaire is so large, about 36 questions, so every input (answer) an individual puts may not be in full.”

“For our case the computers we use to compile the result don’t accept written word, we have to transform occupational words into number coding.”

Koloma said that it had taken them close to a year to actually deliver the information into the computers, emphasizing that it was important they had to do it properly.

Data taken from the 2011 census was also checked with international consultants to get a second opinion on the data.

“When you look at a number of census in many countries, they will say there was an under enumeration of this amount.”

“PNG is one of the most difficult countries in the world to conduct census, but I must say that I’m so proud that the government of PNG, because in the history of census taking in the country- the state fully funded the census with K100 million in 2011.”

He said that in a given time of one to two weeks, with 40,000 people, they had to count everybody in the entire country.

“Is it possible to count everyone? No it is not possible, it’s a big challenge,” he said.

From the preliminary result of 7.1 million population estimate, the statistician added that like any statistic, there is never a perfect number- there could be an over count or under count as it happens.

“With all the statistics made by our development partners in all the censuses they conduct, we are still on track.”

Two years was acceptable according to him, as they had to bring back all the forms, which took them 6 to 7 months, which was an expensive exercise.

A whole year was spent on editing and auditing- processing which, unfortunately were manually done here.

In the future NSO plans to conduct censuses that adopt new technologies like scanning forms, as part of the review and evaluation of the census process in the country.

“We will ensure that the next census will be done properly, and by 2020 we should have one of the best censuses, and much cheaper one at that.”

“In the 1980 census it took nearly three years to complete, 1990 census similar time-frame, 2000 census data was released in 2002.”

“And for those that said that the 2011 census was a failure, it was not- unless and when we did not produce the data then it can be called that, but we will release the data.”