Statistics Sierra Leone (SSL), Director of Demographic and Social Statistics, Peter Bangura, on Tuesday 22 August, supplied the statistics on the disaster-affected areas at the budget hearing. There have been claims of bloated figures of those who have registered as survivors.
According to the census data provided by Statistics, a total of 4,623 residents lived in the five affected areas, Regent (182), Juba-Kaningo (1,173), Malama-Kamayama (1,468), Regent-Matormeh (672) and Culvert (1,128).
Bangura said, “We need to plan on statistical information. There were so many figures going around when the disaster struck; it is only when we were called that’s the time the President saw the actual figures. People are inflating the figures, maybe for personal gain. You can imagine the population of the affected areas and those that have registered.”
The population of the affected areas included survivors and those that have died. “Those that have registered are more than those that were residing in those areas. People are coming from everywhere,” he said.
He said they made a presentation of enumeration areas on 4 December and then they did the projection for 2017, based on the country’s annual growth rate.
“If you talk about a household of six, and 90% of that family is gone so how many survivors are we talking about? Then you have people registering more than 5,000. On our way home the other day, I met people travelling with mattresses towards Waterloo end. Can you imagine? The President has instructed those responsible to make sure that we get these figures right,” he said.
Director of Budget, Matthew Dingie, raised the issue that deals with the gap between the census data and that of the civil register. “The NCRA said they have a gap of about two million people and NEC registered 3.1 million. So that means if these two have invested a lot in extensive data collection and could not meet your figure of 7.1 million, where do you think they’ve gone wrong?”
Bangura responded by saying that it is simple. The methodologies of the three processes were different. The census, he said, everybody that resided in the country as at the night of the 4th of December 2015 onto the morning of the 5th of December, was counted, and that included foreigners, travellers, homeless.
“Our enumerators travelled from household to household, recording people even those who were sick as long as you are residing there. Now people that spent census night in a particular household and died on the morning of the 5th were also counted,” he said.
On the issue of NEC, he said they established centers and there process was aided by politicians because they were interested in the figures that will be coming out from the registration.
“People were ferried from their homes to the centres. They encouraged them to go but I can tell you not all of them were canvassed to go to those centres. Even some that were provided transportation did not go. NEC can tell you that. The proximity to the centre is another factor that will affect people travelling to those centres so that is why I said it is difficult for us to compare the two.”
He went on to say that he pitied NCRA, because they did not enjoy the cooperation of the politicians as NEC did. “In fact, the publicity that was given to NEC by politicians aside from the effort of the commission, I don’t think NCRA enjoyed that support.
He highlighted further that they were engaged in mass enumeration by going into households, hard to reach areas and the riverine. “That was not the case for NEC and NCRA, we have boats to access the riverine communities, like Pujehun and Bonthe. Certain chiefdoms are difficult to access, I am sure NEC and NCRA did not go there, but we went there,” he bluffed.
Dingie interjected by saying that the NCRA claimed that they are working with Statistics to match the figures they have.
By Zainab Joaque
Thursday August 24, 2017.
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