The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has announced that the 2021 Population and Housing Census (PHC) is 99 per cent complete, with only one per cent of households to be covered.
It said all the regions of the country had crossed 99 per cent coverage, except the Greater Accra Region, which was 93 per cent complete.
Giving an update on the 2021 PHC, Government Statistician, Professor Samuel K. Annim, said enumeration had been completed in the 264 of the 272 Statistical Districts, remaining eight, which were yet to reach 95 per cent completion rate.
The districts, he mentioned, were the Ga West, Kpone Katamanso, Ga North, Adentan Municipal, La Nkwantanang-Madina Municipal, Ga East, Tema West and Ledzokuku.
Prof. Annim said refusal of some households and individuals to participate in the exercise, inaccessibility to residence with restricted access, foreign communities and coverage in rapidly growing urban areas, accounted for the relative low coverage in the aforementioned areas.
“GSS will withdraw from the field on August 8, 2021 and bring data collection for the 2021 PHC to a conclusion,” the Government Statistician said.
He said between now and August 8, all persons who had not been counted would be counted.
Prof. Annim further indicated that between now and August 8, 2021would be used for the correction and quality assurance spot checks nationwide.
“Members of the public should expect census officials to visit households or call to verify data collected by enumerators,” he said.
Prof. Annim said the GSS would soon provide provisional results of the 2021 PHC and final data when all households had been enumerated and data analysis, validation and correction had been completed.
He pledged that “no one will be left behind,” and every individual in the country would be counted.
He pleaded with all those who were yet to be counted to avail themselves to be enumerated.
Giving a projection of the country’s mid-year population, the Government Statistician said given the statistics of the 2010 PHC, the country’s population was currently projected at 31.6 million.
Asked of his rating of this year’s PHC, Prof. Annim said this year’s census was the first digitally deployed census and the exercise had been “smooth.”
Prof. Annim expressed the gratitude of Census Management to the public for their cooperation and census officials who had worked hard for the success of this year’s census.
This year’s PHC, the first digitally deployed census is on the theme “You Count, Get Counted.”
The exercise should have been conducted in 2020 but had to be rescheduled to 2021 due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 2021 census started on June 13 with the preparatory activities with the Census Night, the reference point of the exercise, held on June 27, 2021 with enumeration, starting on June 28, 2021.
The exercise ended across the country on July 11 with a mop-up exercise starting from July 18, 2021 to list and count households which had not gone through the exercise.
BY KINGSLE ASARE
