4 COMMUNITIES REFUSE TO BE ENUMERATED ...In Kassena-Nankana West District (SPREAD, SEPT 28, 2010)

Members of four communities in the Kassena-Nankana West District are still reluctant to participate in this year’s Population and Housing Census, until certain anomalies identified are corrected.
The people of Sirigu, Mirigu, Kandiga, and Nabango in the Kassena-Nankana West District are dissatisfied about the fact that their communities have been coded under the Kassena-Nankana East District for enumeration instead of the Kassena-Nankana West District where they rightly belong.
They are also calling on the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) to ensure that trained enumerators from the Kassena-Nankana West District are allowed to conduct the exercise in the four communities instead of sending enumerators from the Kassena-Nankana East District to do the exercise.
Despite assurance from the regional statistician that their concerns would be addressed, the people maintained that until the codes given to the area were changed to reflect their status as communities under the Kassena-Nankana West District, they would not participate in the national exercise.
The Chairman of the Nabango Citizens Association, Mr John Akunsigiya Nsoh, told the Daily Graphic that capturing the population of the area under another district would in the future affect the developmental needs of the people.
They are, therefore, calling on the GSS to rectify the anomaly.
“If the problem is not corrected, no enumerator will be allowed in our communities to work, ” he said.
Following a petition raised by the people, the GSS has withdrawn enumerators from the Kassena-Nankana East District initially sent to conduct the exercise and replaced them with enumerators trained in the Kassena-Nankana West District.
But residents of these four communities are maintaining their grounds not to participate in the exercise until the codes given to them are changed to reflect their status as being part of the Kassena-Nankana West District.
When contacted, the Upper East Regional Statistician, Mr Festus Manuh, urged the communities to allow the exercise to go on after which the anomaly identified would be corrected.
He explained that the error might have arisen due to mapping difficulties but said after the enumeration, there would be an opportunity to correct the error identified.
Meanwhile, at the time of filing this report, the Kassena-Nankana West District Census Implementation Committee has scheduled a meeting with opinion leaders, assembly members and chiefs from the four communities to find an amicable solution to the problem.
At exactly 12 midnight last Sunday, the 2010 Population and Housing Census began to collect detailed statistics on the size of the population for effective planning.
The two-week exercise, which will end on October 12, is also to collect data on the composition and distribution of Ghana’s population, the residential accommodation and facilities in use.