By Chinwe Imo-Eze Onwosi
The National Population Commission (NPC) says it will conduct a trial census in nine of Ebonyi state’s 13 local government areas in July.
The federal commissioner of the commission in the state, Darlington Okereke told newsmen in Abakaliki that the trial census was a “dress rehasal” in preparation of the 2023 population housing census.
Okereke said the Commission is also training over 90 field personnel, consisting of supervisors and enumerators drawn mainly from communities within the 9 selected areas namely, Abakaliki, Izzi, Ohaukwu, Ezza South, Ezza North, Ishielu, Afikpo North, Onicha and Ivo in the state.
He said measures are taken to ensure the successful conduct of the Trial Census to be conducted from July 11-24, 2022 as he further called on stakeholders, state government, local government councils and traditional institutions in the selected LGAs, to support and assist the functionaries assigned within their domain for a successful exercise.
“In line with the approval of the federal government, the trial census will be conducted from June 27 to July 30 nationwide. The timeliness for the trial census activities are:
“12 days for training of field functionaries in the state. Three days for validation of Enumeration Area (EA) frame. Five days for enumeration of persons and five days for mop up enumeration.
“The trial census will test all aspects of census operations, from planning to implementation, including logistic arrangement management, questionnaire design and format, training procedures, fieldwork operations amongst others.
“Others are publicity, payment system, data processing, data tabulations and analysis.
“The specific objectives are to assess the quality and the usefulness of EA map that has been created.
“To determine the possible demographic as well as geographical changes that might have occurred between 2016 and 2018 and their implications for census taking amongst others,” he stated
