By Joseph Lamin Kamara
Just three months to the much anticipated December 2015 Census, the process is still faced with issues that may undermine its outcome, a fresh study by the Institute for Governance Reform (IGR) has found.
In January President Ernest Bai Koroma postponed the population and housing census from April to December, 2015, on the basis that the Ebola outbreak would block an effective and credible census process. Government argued that it needed to concentrate on the fight against the lingering deadly virus that has, according to government figures, claimed more than 3000 lives in the country.
But the postponement came just after IGR, a research and advocacy think Tank, launched a report titled “THE CREDIBILITY OF THE 2015 CENSUS: WILL ALL HEADS BE COUNTED?” In that report IGR urged government to postpone the counting process and concentrate on the fight against Ebola and other emerging issues.
In the report, IGR argued that the Ebola outbreak in the country would not allow a credible census, due to the public health emergency and the risk of contracting the virus. But crucially the research outfit challenged the recruitment process of officers, noting that the process had been “largely subverted and its technical content compromised for political and personal gains.”
Nine out of 14 district census officers, according to the IGR report, were active members of the ruling All People’s Congress (APC) party.
And it adds that the cartographic field map updating work had the propensity to distort the result of the census and that Statistics Sierra Leone (SSL), the body charged with conducting the census, had no demographer and statistician by qualification.
SSL dismissed that report as “baseless” and “not consultative”.
And almost seven months since then, IGR has again published a follow up study, titled: “CENSUS CREDIBILITY PROBLEMS LINGER ON”.
This study was done between March and July 2015.
“Follow-up measures by Statistics Sierra Leone have not only been unhelpful in addressing the issues in recruitment and the errors in the census mapping, but the statistics agency is presenting a misleading picture to government and stakeholders about the country’s preparedness to hold a credible census,” the new report reads.
IGR says it investigated three key areas which it raised in its previous report.
Under “cartographic map verification”, the report references a May 2015 report by SSL itself about its cartographic map verification exercise that was focused on 24 Enumeration Areas (EAs). It notes that the statistics agency admitted that there were serious limitations to the verification exercise.
To IGR, SSL proved that it was not only the sample that it selected for the verification of the cartographic process that was too small, but also the EAs verified “were purposively small”.
“All selected EAs were along the main highways with easy access; none were selected from remote areas,” reads the IGR report.
Apart from reports that SSL dismissed and ordered the arrest of two its employees in the eastern district of Kenema for refusing to abide by instructions to reduce the number of households during the Kenema mapping, as claimed, IGR found out that only 9% of section chiefs said their communities were covered.
The remaining 91% of section chiefs, as per IGR findings, noted their communities were not visited.
Under ‘involvement of community leaders in the household count’, the advocacy institute found out that SSL did not meet town or section chiefs, but only paramount chiefs, and that SSL had held “meetings with some paramount chiefs, in which an endorsement was made that all chiefdoms were fully covered during the cartographic map updating.”
“In terms of recruitment, it was observed that the Census Management Team still remains the same. SSL has decided to extend the contracts of [District Census Officers] DCOs who are mostly politicians to handle important role of census logistics and oversee data collection in designated districts,” the report notes.
At the launching of its new report, on Tuesday, at its office in Freetown, IGR’s Executive Director, Andrew Lavalie, said they were not after any institution or anybody at Statistics Sierra Leone, but they were delivering on their three key areas they had set for three years, which he said were “to improve democratic governance, to oversee or monitor the post-Ebola recovery and economic governance.”
Lavalie said the British Department for International Development (DFID) had hired an international consultant Dr Peter Pepper to help SSL perform effectively, but he said Dr Pepper had reported that his suggestions had been ignored.
The new report however states that some progress has been made to improve the census process. It says by postponing the process, President Koroma is allowing SSL to partner with the civil society and community authorities to enhance sanity.
SSL, according to the report, has also made some verifications in which it included members of the ruling and opposition parties.
“SSL has worked to make the field staff recruitment process more transparent by putting out advertisements for various filed posts”.
Meanwhile, SSL’s communication officer, Samuel Serry, has condemned the new IGR report, saying they find it “as baseless, erroneous and it lacks all the elements of credibility.”
“We welcome IGR’s interest in the process, but we also want IGR to know that they cannot dictate on how we carry out our activities. This is because, as an institution, we have been following internationally accepted standards in conducting censuses. We want IGR to know that they are in no position to dictate our mandate,” Serry said in an interview on Tuesday, at his Tower Hill office in Freetown.
The SSL Communication Officer complained that IGR had not invited them to the launching of both reports and had failed to send them copies.
But the new IGR report appears to counter this claim.
“In preparing the report, IGR submitted the draft report to SSL who provided a detailed written feedback on the findings. IGR and SSL had a meeting on the report at the SSL conference room attended by Statistics Council, Census Technical Committee and development partners,” the report notes.
Serry further argued that it was “a mere coincidence” that the census was postponed in the same month of the publication of the first IGR report.
“Prior to the postponement, Statistic Sierra Leone Council, civil society organizations and political parties met and decided to advise government to postpone the census because of the Ebola outbreak,” he said.
“There was every reason for us to postpone the census, but not because of the IGR report.”
The publication of the first IGR report followed a wide criticism from the public who, together with political parties, called on government to suspend the process and review it. Pro-government supporters argued that the postponement of the census would affect the timing of the next local council and general elections.
And in postponing the census, President Koroma stated he had listened to the calls of political parties and relevant stakeholders, and because the Ebola outbreak was still ravaging the country, he decided to postpone the process.
Serry also denied that they had ignored Dr Pepper’s recommendations. H claimed they were gradually implementing them.
One of Dr Pepper’s recommendations, he said, was to establish a statistics council which they had already done.
In its new report, IGR urges government to restructure the leadership of SSL, but Serry said they had done advertisements for key positions such as Assistant Statistician and Statistical Assistant.
“Restructuring is not a one-off thing, it is a process,” he said, adding that they were not oblivious they had challenges, like any other government institutions.
(C) Politico 13/08/15
