By NAN

The National Population Commission (NPC) in Plateau has launched state-level training for 90 enumerators and nine supervisors to ensure an equipped and efficient workforce for its trial census, ahead of the 2023 population and housing census.

The NPC Director in Plateau, Mr Pam Deme, said during the event in Jos on Monday that the field personnel would be trained for 12 days for appropriate data collection in nine local government areas of Plateau, and appealed for cooperation from community leaders in the areas.

He listed the local government areas as: Jos East, Bassa, Barkin Ladi, Mangu, Bokkos, Pankshin, Langtang North, Shendam and Qua’apan.

He said “I urge residents of the selected areas to cooperate with the census staff and answer questions sincerely for our common good.”

The director described the trial census as a necessary prerequisite stage, and one of the cardinal activities of the commission to ensure the conduct of credible census.

He added that “the trial census would help the commission to prepare against any challenge that may appear during the main census.

“The enormous investment on the census cannot be jeopardised, so we will need to test to ensure everything is properly set.”

Deme also said that the training would ensure that enumerators and supervisors received the knowledge, skills and imbibe the approaches required for the field work to facilitate data gathering for the good of the nation.

He explained that NPC had organised town hall meetings at the northern, southern and the central zones of the state where key stakeholders were sensitised on the trial census, and their concerns addressed to ensure the success of the exercise.

He added that “after the town hall meetings, stakeholders went back to their various communities to enlighten the people about the exercise.”

The Chairman of NPC, Isa Kwarra, said that the trial census was to ensure operations were tested ahead of the census proper, ideally one year ahead of the actual census date.

Represented by the Federal Commissioner for Plateau, Mrs Cecilia Dapoet, the NPC boss explained that “the trial census will cover 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

“NPC will use a total of 13,500 field functionaries which comprise of 11,510 enumerators, 1,529 supervisors and 823 facilitators for the trial census.”

Kwarra added that the trial census was also to assess the quality and the usefulness of the Enumeration Area (EA) maps that have been created, and determine the requisite educational qualification for the 2023 census’ enumerators, including necessary logistic support that might be required from states and local governments.

Miss Lohya Dashe, who spoke on behalf of the trainees, assured the commission of a good job.