National Census extended by two weeks
An additional two weeks that would have normally been for the "mop-up" exercise has been added onto the National census schedule.
This is due to the late start for most provinces after delays in dispatch of materials, conduct of training and other matters.
Minister for Administrative Services Richard Masere told NBC's talk back show, this will cater for an extra week from the 1st - 7th for provinces who have not started collecting data and those just started.
He says the following week from 8th-14 July will be actual mop-up period, to verify data collected or not.
"A mop-up activity is in the event if we have a disaster or weather could not allow us to go in or some issue happened, and we couldn't go in, we allow the mop-up to go in and clean up the data that they didn't collect the first time.
"So that's a seven-day period within the census calendar that we set, so what we've done now is that because most provinces are starting their enumeration by Monday, we've allowed an additional seven days to the mop up which also allows a full 14 days after that to make sure that those provinces that started late continue additional 14 days from 1st of July to 14th July", Mr Masere further clarified.
Most provinces just completed their tier three trainings and should get into full swing data collection by Monday 1st July, bypassing the Sunday - 30th June deadline.
Mr. Masere stressed, there won't be any more extensions after the 14th of July:
"We cannot go on after the 14th because after the 14th, most people tend to forget June 16, you know where they were.
"When we say we give an extension of 7 days, we are saying it's an added seven days that we are adding onto the mop-up activity", Mr Masere said
The New Guinea Islands region has started data collection and is leading with updates of its numbers, due to the use of tablets.
The Highlands Region will have completed its 3-tier training and by this weekend, data collection is expected to start.
Teachers to return to schools for start of Term 3
Meantime, the up to 20-thousand teachers engaged in the National census are expected to return to teaching when the term 3 academic year starts on Monday 1st July.
The extension by the National Statistical office for data collection to go past the deadline of this Sunday, June 30th is expected to see a shortage of manpower with teachers going back to teaching as classes resume.
Education Secretary Dr. Uke Kombra told NBC News, classes will resume on Monday, as well as teachers.
The school academic year for term 2 was shortened by a week to cater for this exercise.
The 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.
While NCD has seen progression with data collection in the first week, majority of provinces have only just completed their tier 3 trainings and expecting to get into actual work in the coming week.