Professor Samuel Annim
Government Statistician, Professor Samuel Annim, has said that questions on nationality in the upcoming 2021 Population and Housing Census will be based on self-response of respondents.
The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), he said, will therefore, not impose or interrogate people’s nationality on the field during data collection.
“You do not go interrogating questions on passports, identification cards and what have you. It is not our role as GSS to verify the authenticity of somebody’s nationality or for that matter, somebody’s ethnicity,” he said.
Speaking at an engagement session with journalists on Thursday, the GSS boss said the country had its own ways of verifying the nationality of citizens and census has never been one of the procedures of verification.
To avoid any misconception about the exercise, he indicated that data generated on the exercise will not be presented at the individual level but rather be based on aggregates at the national, regional and district level.
“Core of census is to get information on the count of people and getting their characteristics. And it ends there,” he said.
Speaking about data collection on ethnicity, he reiterated that, data collection on ethnicity in 2021 remained consistent with previous census, adding that “questions that were posed in 2000, 2010 and 2021 will be consistent even though between 2010 and 2021, we have had slight modifications to some of the ethnic groups.”
“Looking at the 2010 census, we never report on ethnicity at the sub-ethnic group level and the reason is that we appreciate the complexities and emotions surrounding it and so since 2000 we provide report only at the major group level,” he said.
As part of census activities, there will be structure listing exercise which would begin on June 13, 2021 while enumeration will start on June 28 and end on July 11, 2021.
He urged all persons who would be in the country as at June 27, 2021, which is the census night, to get counted irrespective of their nationality or ethnic groupings.
“If by the July 8, you have not been counted, use our call centre. We don’t want you to wait till July 11 to call the centre. The same applies to the listing of structures. If by June 20, your structure has not been listed, make use of our call centre,” he said.
By Issah Mohammed