NS Column – 2020 February #02
Published on: Feb 26, 2020

We have 134 days before the 2020 Census enumeration starts.

Hello Papua New Guinea! Welcome back to our usual weekly update on the activities of the National Statistical Office and the 2020 National Population and Housing Census.

Last week I mentioned to you that 2020 is the census year and the country will conduct its next round of population count starting on the 13th of July and will take about a week. The main objective of the 2020 Census is to do a complete count of every person in PNG, both citizens and non-citizens, at a point in time.

NSO as part of its preparation for the main census count, has conducted Training of Trainers for the Structural Listing at the national level in Port Moresby which ended last Friday. The training will then proceed to the provinces for officers at the provincial level who will be trained as listers for the Structural Listing exercise in some of the census units/villages that have shown indication of growth through satellite images.

As I indicated in the last week column, I will now explain the main things done during the Structural Listing exercise and its purpose.

The main things considered during the Structural Listing exercise are:

  • To locate every dwelling place in both the urban areas and villages that will become the basis to establish census units (CUs). This is basically because individuals live under a structure; either under a private dwelling or under a non-private dwelling.
  • To identify every household in a dwelling. Here a household is defined as persons or family who live together in a setting, cook and eat from the same cooking pot.
  • To do a headcount (pre-census) of every person living in a household. This is to ensure the interviewer has a background information of the household that she/he will enumerate during the actual enumeration period.

There are four main reasons to have Structural Listing exercise and they are:

  • To form workloads for field officers/interviewers during the main census count. For this round of census, a CU will consist of 50 houses where an interviewer will be allocated to interview these households during the actual enumeration period.
  • To assist field officers/interviewers to correctly locate households during the main census count so that they do not miss them.
  • To assist census management team/planners to formulate the right cost estimates for logistics.
  • Importantly will serve as a checklist that every person has been counted.

We will inform you when the Structural Listing is rolled out in those growth areas across the country.

Next week I will bring to you the Pilot Census Report after it is presented to the 2020 National Census Steering Committee. The Pilot Census was a dress rehearsal of the main census enumeration which was conducted last month (January), testing all components, logistics, security, publicity, procurement and the census questionnaire.

Thank you for following our column for public knowledge and awareness purposes.

Until then, that is all for now.

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