The Member of Parliament for Okaikwei-North in The Greater Accra Region has called on all residents in Ghana to take keen interest in the ongoing 2021 National Population and Housing Census describing the data to be collected as an imperative for socioeconomic planning and resource allocation for the collective good.
Madam Theresa Lardi Awuni who made this known in statement she read on The Floor of Parliament said economic and social policy programs can be effectively formulated to address the elementary developmental challenges facing the country as a whole and at the very base of the society as well as “the different socio-linguistic groups and their immediate geographical zones”.
According to her, territorial demarcation hinges on census data and as such “this exercise is key to help understand the political geography of the country and others as such allocation and re-demarcation of districts and constituencies.
The population and housing census, which is basically about enumerating the number of people in Ghana and the number of Housing structures is in line with SECTION 34 of the Statistical Services ACT 1003 (2019).
Historically, the 2021 Population and Housing Census (PHC) which should have been conducted in 2020 but due to COVID-19 pandemic was scheduled for this year.
Background:
The first census in the country was conducted in 1891 under the auspices of the then British Administration.
Censuses were then carried out every ten years thereafter in 1901, 1911, 1921 and 1931 when the Second World War disrupted the series, hence there was no census in 1941.
After the war, a census was conducted in 1948, and that was the last to be organized by the then British Administration.
After independence in 1957, Ghana adopted the United Nations’ recommendation to conduct censuses in years ending in ‘zero’ or close to ‘zero’.
Thus, the first post-independence census was conducted in 1960 and the second in 1970.
There was no census in 1980 due to political instability, breaking the decennial census taking in the country.
A census was eventually conducted in 1984, and then in 2000, breaking the expected decennial census taking in the country and presenting unusual intervals between the censuses – 14 years between 1970 and 1984 and 16 years between 1984 and 2000.
The 2010 census has restored the decennial process of census taking.
Story by Edzorna Francis Mensah
