By Joseph Lamin Kamara
Executive Director of the Institute for Governance Reform, a local research institute based in Freetown, says “government will be unreasonable to push to have a census amidst the Ebola outbreak in the country.”
Andrew Lavalie told Politico yesterday at his office in Freetown that the current Ebola outbreak in the country would not create conducive environment “for a credible census.”
Lavalie warned government to pay attention to the fight against Ebola, address the future challenges of the country and “postpone the population and housing census” scheduled to take place in April, this year.
“You cannot raise the profile of census in an Ebola ravaged country like Sierra Leone,” Lavalie said, adding that the cost of conducting a wrong census to the country would be far worse than reviewing the process.
In a report titled “THE CREDIBILITY OF THE 2015 CENSUS IN SIERRA LEONE: WILL ALL HEADS BE COUNTED?”, published yesterday, IGR states that the process of the 2015 census “has been largely subverted and its technical content compromised for political and personal gains.”
The report, a result of a research conducted by IGR before the 2014 census was interrupted by Ebola, also states that among the 14 district census officers, 9 are active politicians belonging to the ruling party and that there is agreement of interest between some politicians that intend to consolidate power and some technocrats who desire to maintain their jobs.
“Updating process was not well followed in the last mapping exercise,” the report states, referencing a protest letter by a staff member of Statistics Sierra Leone the body coordinating the census process. The letter quoted by the reported stated that senior officials managing the census to reduce population counts in Kenema District had manipulated the updating process.
“The cartographic field map updating work…has the tendency to distort the outcome of the census if not handled professionally and transparently,” states IGR.
IGR also claims that the Census 2015 process “has no demographer and statistician” by qualification, and therefore, “it is advisable for the census to be put on hold for now to allow time to correct the anomalies.”
Meanwhile the Census Communication Officer, Samuel Serry Jr at Statistics Sierra Leone, said the allegations were baseless and false and that the report was “not consultative”.
He said they were a government institution and byimplementing its policies they were merely doing their job.
“The enumeration process was supposed to have been done in December 2014 but government realised that the Ebola outbreak would have affected it, so it issued out a press release postponing the census. If the same government comes back and asks that we carry on, why not?” he said.
Regarding claims of political interest in the process, he said they had advertised all positons at Statistics without asking for party cards but qualifications.
“Those who fulfilled the requirement were recruited. They submitted the required certificates and the management team was satisfied with them. Development partners like UNFPA and even council chairmen were part of that process and were all satisfied,” he said.
© Politico 16/01/15
