WINDHOEK – Close to 154 field workers in the Khomas Region took an official oath of secrecy as part of the 2013 Labour Force Survey (LFS) of the Namibia Statistics Agency.
More than 40 000 people countrywide will be interviewed during the 2013 LFS following the decision to conduct the survey on an annual basis.
Dr John Steytler, Statistician General of the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA), said last week that Cabinet has directed the NSA to conduct annual labour force surveys to provide the public and private sectors with up to date information on developments in the labour market. About N$14 million is budgeted for this year’s survey that will cover a sample of 9 108 households.
Close to 454 people have been employed out of the 10 000 applications submitted to the NSA. The survey will run from September 30 to October 13 this year and it is expected the final results will be released in March 2014.
Officially administering the oath of secrecy to the field workers who were mainly youths was newly appointed Deputy Director of Strategic Communication Iipumbu Sakaria, who on Friday urged the field workers to work hard and to ensure that the counting process proceeds correctly in order to avoid misinformation. “As you are aware, you will be dealing with sensitive information of different people. If all of you decide that you will just sit under a tree and fill in the form yourselves, you will be misinforming the nation and doing injustice to the decision-making process. I want you to take the exercise seriously and to provide proper information so that government can plan better. Inform government of the real situation. We want good work done, but the best way to achieve results is to work together. Be contributors to progress and not obstacles to progress,” Sakaria urged.
NSA managers will be assigned to different regions to monitor the survey. Sakaria warned the field enumerators that disclosing personal information to anyone is an offence and anyone can take legal action against such workers.
The first full-scale LFS was carried out in 1997 under the National Household Survey programme. This was after the government endorsed a five-year plan of a series of surveys to be conducted at regular intervals.
The 2012 LFS was conducted in October 2012 and the results were published this year April. It was the fifth post-independence labour survey and was conducted in partnership with the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare. This year the survey will be conducted entirely by the NSA.
Steytler during the launch said the LFS is the only official source of labour force statistics in the country, adding that the official unemployment rate is calculated on the basis of the survey. He indicated that of all national statistics the unemployment rate produced by the LFS is among the most widely used indicators to assess the health of the Namibian economy.
The training of field workers has already been concluded and they were deployed to their respective regions on Saturday, and will start with the listing of households today.
The NSA says the selection of households will be aided by the use of the Geographic Information System (GIS). Moreover, Steytler said that refusing to participate in the labour survey is a violation of the Statistics Act 9 of 2011 and is harmful to Namibia. Therefore, the public has been urged to assist field staff to do their work in order to get accurate results. The swearing-in ceremony was also conducted at the other three training centres at Okahandja, Otjiwarongo and Ondangwa.
By Albertina Nakale