The Government Statistician, Professor Samuel Kobina Anim, has revealed that the 2020 housing and population census has been postponed by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) due to the Covid-19.
He made the announcement yesterday at a press conference.
“June 28, 2020, as the Census Night has been rescheduled. We need to put together over 75,000 enumerators and supervisors and train them,” he told journalists.
In January this year, the Ghana Statistical Service had said the census, originally scheduled for March 2020, would delay by two months.
Addressing journalists, he urged its stakeholders, the media and the general public to maintain a positive engagement and participation in the preparation and implementation of the 2020 census activities, including sharing of the right information.
Postponed
In January, the Service postponed the census, which had been scheduled for March 15, 2020 – June 28, 2020.
According to Professor Kobina Anim, the decision taken then was to allow the Service to conduct a mapping process and build quality data for the main census exercise.
“The reasons we rescheduled the 2020 population and housing census are driven primarily by the need to deploy geospatial data in the data collection exercise,” Professor Anim said.
He had noted that a team of experts from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), University of Southampton, had arrived to provide the Service with the necessary support to overlay building footprints with their demarcating exercise.
He said the exercise would have started with the identification of buildings and structures, which was expected to end in June, to be followed by the census till July 2020.
However, he had envisaged a possible postponement, and therefore noted that while funds were not much of a challenge, other challenges could affect the intended start date of the exercise.
“From a technical point of view, the Ghana Statistical Service is very ready to have the census done in 2020. We’ve also received a high governmental commitment that this is an activity that should precede an election. In terms of the date that we should expect our men on the field, we still have to go through some considerations. We did say March but due to some challenges we might delay by a month or two,” he explained at the time.
The census is estimated to cost GHS477 million.
