Sierra Leone: The Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Honourable Chernor Maju Bah, has maintained that they believe the proposed mid-term census project is politically motivated as the government is yet to convince the public about the actual reason for it to be held.
He made this disclosure while speaking on President Julius Maada Bio’s three years in governance since he took up office in 2018.
According to the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, thirteen political parties came together and raised their concerns on the mid-term census and him as the Opposition Leader has called on President Bio through an interview he (Hon Chernor) did with a media house, to have a rethink on the issue before making a pronouncement or giving his nod for the process to go ahead.
He said there have been instances when people around the Presidency have misadvised the President on issues, which had the President been properly briefed on the said issues, he would have either made a pronouncement or not given the green light for them to move forwards, citing the mid-term census as an example.
The focus of the current administration he said should be at trying to implement the issues picked out from the 2015 census before starting a debate about a new census, questioning what the mid-term census would achieve as the officials are talking about mismatch.
“The duty of Statistics should be to sit and match the information they claim are a mismatch. You cannot do a census to match something,” he said, suggesting that they should go back to the system and do the right thing. He complained that the major problem now is that those who did the 2015 census had been chased out of office. This according to him is what the current administration is facing as they want to start the census process from scratch, which according to him, is not the priority of the government neither the people who are searching for money to secure their bread and butter to eat while the government is thinking about spending monies on mid-term census.
He questioned the benefit of the mid-term census other than the political fear people are raising, noting that the Census Instrument is yet to be taken to Parliament as per procedure for the House to endorse or disapprove.
“You don’t need census to tell you about the status of farmers, lack of medical equipment and drugs at the hospitals. These are real life examples that everyone is seeing,” he maintained, calling for the resources to be used in addressing these life-threatening issues rather than holding a census six years after the 2015 census.
AMK/15/04/2021