The Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) said it has so far completed major phases of the 2023 Population and Housing Census since its commencement on 18 September last year.

Namibia’s Statistician General Alex Shimuafeni said yesterday that the NSA will now commence with the reconciliation operation, which is the final phase of the post-enumeration survey (PES). Late last year, the NSA conducted the PES after the census enumeration to measure the coverage and quality of the census results. It was conducted in selected constituencies and selected enumeration areas (EAs).

Shimuafeni said in a statement that the reconciliation operation will be conducted countrywide from 1 to 14 February 2024, where NSA officials “will have to go back to the households which have persons who are found not to be matching, meaning they were found with details that are not completely matching between the census and PES information collected.”

“This will be done to determine the correct final match status for these individuals. The households will be contacted either in person or telephonically. This then serves to guarantee accurate and reliable data with respect to the content and coverage,” he added.

The reconciliation operation, he noted, will be conducted countrywide, but only in the constituencies and their selected enumeration areas for PES, which consists of the households which were discovered during the matching operation.

To carry out the operation, the NSA will require a team of 364 staff from all 14 regions, including six reserves per region and 115 vehicles. These staff will be trained on 29 and 30 January 2024, in their regions, from which 280 field staff will be deployed for the reconciliation operation.

“The 364 staff for reconciliation are the same who worked for the PES data collection, of which the best-performing candidates were the ones selected. These staff will, however, not work within the same EAs and equally not with the same households in this current phase,” he continued. - Nampa