By: Alimamy.[email protected]
SIERRA LEONE, Freetown – In a press briefing held at the Ministry of information and Communication on 9th June 2022, the Statistician General (SG), Mallam O. Sankoh including his team from Statistics S/Leone, have explained the justification of the process of the current 2021 mid-term published census result in the country.
The Statistician General first described the mid-term process as being a significant one and has had a rigorous process to ensure that the data have the quality for public consumption.
“So, in doing this DSG went through the presentation and make presentation and make clarification. I would just to re-echo on some of those, especially those who have the potential for misinterpretation, misunderstanding because this is not the first time we have had a census. Is the issue of the population that is been counted. I think that the issue had always been stressed by Journalists. Who do we count and who answers to our enumerators? You could have five people in a household we are satisfied with one of those, a competent person in that household responding to our question” Statistician General explained.
He said there are many people who will say they were not counted even educated people, but they were counted. He further told participants in the conference of the Ministry that a husband could have given the information about his wife and children than any other member.
“There are two types of populations, the Geo and the defacto. What is important for us to understand, who is it that we count on census night? The person who slept on census night we do the following day. The defacto, you slept there. Does not matter whether that is your usual place of residence or not, that’s what we want. Where did you sleep on census night? That is Defacto population. That is what most censuses must consider”.
He further analysed that the digital census is different from that of the previous 2015 questionnaires and other censuses used. He noted that the western area especially in Freetown has had a topical issue on the population density been discussed by Sierra Leoneans. Because of that, he mentioned that, those who slept that night, for the following day were counted. AJ/11/6/2022