NCD ends counting

By ALISON ANIS

 

Counting for the national population and housing census for the National Capital District and most parts of the country ended yesterday, The National reports.

The NCD coordinating team confirmed that officers in the district last Thursday received lump-sum payments of K280 for the K40 daily field allowances from July 11–17.

However, some officers in NCD, doing final evaluation of completed workload yesterday, admitted “not everyone living in the nation’s capital had been counted”.

Team leader for Waigani and Morata area in NCD’s zone two said his officers had not covered all the houses because the sketches from listings last year were unreliable and contained many errors, especially for the most dangerous suburbs in the city.

Jimmy Peter blamed security and the clash with the common roll update for the national elections, as “the two events which happened simultaneously and created a lot of confusion for the people”.

Peter claimed the sketches and listings for census units were inaccurate.

“When we did the actual census, we found out that some houses were not included and that certain areas on the map where it says there were no houses actually revealed there were houses and people living there.

“We found out that there were some ghost names on the listings and that the descriptions of the houses were made up,” Peter said.

He said this was evident for places like Morata 4, Baruni and some parts of Waigani.

He said in some places, the number of people living in one house was more than what was on the listings.

“Some of our officers were shouted at and chased by residents at Morata next to the swamp.

Other residents, including some of Asian origin, simply shut their doors in our face when we approached them.

“Some residents in Waigani have complained that the census people did not visit their house to get data and wanted to know why,” Peter said.

National Statistician Joseph Aka said last week they would introduce a mop-up exercise for units that were left out during counting week.

He said the mop-up would take place after results were submitted and evaluated by provincial census coordinators who would properly identify which census units had missed out.