Education department unlikely to extend teachers engagement as delay in census exercise blunders into second week

The Department of Education will make a decision on further engagement of teachers in the national census if an official notice is out on an extension, secretary Dr Uke Kombra says.

Dr Kombra said there are at least over 17,000 teachers engaged as volunteers to collect data amidst other census related activities nationwide.

The school academic year for term two was shortened by a week to cater for this exercise which started last week.

With school holidays coming to close at the end of this week, secretary Kombra told NBC News that the Department is unaware of any extension, hence, cannot make a decision as yet.

“We are not officially aware of any change in the dates,” the education boss said.

The national census which was scheduled for the 17th-30th June was delayed due to late start in training, dispatch of materials, tablets and logistics among others.

Port Moresby (NCD) and Lae [Morobe] started data collection last week whilst other centers around the country began this week.

Autonomous Region of Bougainville [AROB] will start enumeration process following the completion of the enumerators training over the weekend.

Bougainville provincial census coordinator Michael Omepa said all 39 venues in the region have concluded the third-tier training and are ready to roll out enumeration this week.

He said most of the materials have already arrived in Bougainville for the enumeration period to go ahead with a K1m support from the ABG.

Similarly, four Local Level Governments [LLGs] in Mosa, Hoskins, Gasmata and Gloucester in West New Britain joined enumeration phase of the National Population and Housing Census yesterday after the province made a rocky start last week.

Of the 12 LLGs in the province, only Mosa and Hoskins are using the tablets to collect data.
Meanwhile, funding constrains have been hindering the national census work in Northern, heading into the second week.

Provincial census coordinator Paul Kamani said they are yet to access funds for food rations for the trainers and enumerators for most of the LLGs in the province.

Despite the distribution of all necessary census materials to respective LLGs, the northern coordinator is awaiting food rations to get the census work off the ground.