Ghana Statistical Service ready for 2020 Population and Housing Census

The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has assured Ghanaians of its readiness ahead of the 2020 Population and Housing Census.

The service in its preparation towards next year’s Census is promising a smooth and incident free exercise.

The Population and Housing Census which is conducted every decade is an essential national exercise that takes count of every person residing in Ghana at the time of the census and establishes other important demographic details about every individual in the country.

The exercise helps in ascertaining the size of a country’s population, the structure of the society as well as determine taxable adults, forecast the possible economic needs and provide social amenities.

In an interview with theghanareport.com, Francis Nyarko-Larbi, Head of Census Publicity, Education and Advocacy said, the service is ready to start the head-count exercise.

‘We are on it; we just have some areas for mapping and testing in relation to technology’ he said.

GSS for the first time will adopt the use of electronic data collection with other geospatial technologies which has been recommended by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) for the 2020 round of Population and Housing Census.

Explaining further, Nyarko-Larbi said, the usage of the technology will make their work a lot easier as it will cut down on the manual labor.

“The only problem we are facing now has to do with the internet which has made it difficult to sync and send data to the headquarters but we are working to address that” he noted.

The GHC500million estimated budget for 2020 Census according to Nyarko-Larbi is on course.

“As at now, I have not heard anything from superiors about any difficulty in relation to money, so we are on course” he added.