Milne Bay Province yet to receive tablets and funding support from NSO

Days away from the Census Reference Night this Sunday, June 16 and Milne Bay Province has revealed it’s highly likely they could start the enumeration exercise a few days late.

Despite the slow release of funds from the National Statistical Office [NSO], their third tier LLG training of enumerators gets underway this Friday [tomorrow] for most of its 18 rural local level governments with the assistance from the provincial government.

Provincial Census Coordinator Dimiki Doula says logistics has been their biggest hurdle.

“Given the financial constraints we still held up here at the headquarters due to unavailability of Logistics,” Mr. Doula said.

Mr Doula also revealed they are yet to receive funding on hand by the National Statistics Office for the exercise and are using internal funds from provincial government support.

“Our Provincial Administration has been very supportive with the allocation of K300,000 and another K300,000 more will be allocated,” Doula said.

He added that so far, they’ve only 40 tablets on hand for training purposes and are awaiting the delivery of hundreds more for the actual enumeration next week, to then be distributed to all its 18 LLG locations.

“We only received 2 cartoons which is only 40 tablets for training purposes but for enumerators we are yet to receive. We need over 700 tablets to reach the province before we reach the enumeration date,” He added.