Census: Enumerators urged to avoid "irrelevant" questions

Ambassador Milton Kambula has advised the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) to revise the census questions and stick to the most relevant as well as popularizing the questions to ease the process of enumeration for the remaining census days

The Peace Service Ambassador made the call while appearing on a National television station giving his insight into the National population census process that is ongoing in the country.

Amb. Kambula said that with the sighted incidents were some members of the public have been reported to have resisted and gone ahead to attack the enumerators, speaks volume to the lack of enough preparation that was done to prepare the population for the process.

“If the population can round up, beat enumerators and confiscate their gadgets then they were not well prepared for process and they haven’t understood the importance and benefits of being counted,” Kambula said.

He  said that UBOS would have circulated the research questions to the population to allow members of the public to fully understand and prepare the information needed.

Kambula noted  that the enumeration ought to have been a guiding conversation and questions must not be personal but driving into social, economic transformation, vision 2040, SDGs which would feed the National Planning Authority to better plan for the country.

“How could an enumerator ask whether one uses a condom or not, the last time one slept with their wife and the number of children outside marriage. All these personal and irrelevant questions being asked to a man before his family members, we may end up seeing broken marriages,” Amb. Kambula said.

He observed that this all speaks to the ill preparations that were done to the enumerators most of whom have no knowledge of conducting research.

“Uganda’s problem has always been lack of leadership; we always work on fire fighting programming and this cannot give you good results. We seem to be focused on an event, census is not an event, we had to have enough preparation especially on the policy,” Kambula said.

“I feel the census was ill prepared, the budget came late, recruitment of staff was shabbily conducted, capacity building was done on job and this may not give the best results expected.”

The ambassador, however continued to ask Ugandans not to shun the national census exercise but spare their time and participate so as to be able to demand for better services delivery from government since it would have captured the current status of most Ugandans for better planning.