The Mop-up Exercise for the 2021 Mid-Term Census which started on December 30, 2021 will end on Sunday, February 12, 2022, the Chief Census Officer, Statistics Sierra Leone (Stats SL) said on Thursday.
Prof. Osman Sankoh said, “As we wind down the People’s Census, we will leave no willing household behind!”
“Following that, a winding down period starts throughout the country. The Mop Up exercise has enabled Stats SL to intensify enumeration in outstanding communities where for a number of reasons enumeration has been either slow or not carried out yet.”
He said that during the Mop-Up Exercise, Stats SL redeploy enumerators and supervisors in all areas where there have been refusals or enumerators have not reached for other reasons.
“We are however delighted to note that irrespective of challenges reported during the implementation of the mid-term census, our field staff have now covered a significant landscape of the entire country,” Prof Sankoh said.
“The public would be thrilled to hear that in the past few weeks, a growing number of people have visited Stats SL HQ and our district offices and requested to be counted. This is gratifying because in some of the communities they come from, our enumerators were not initially welcomed.”
What will happen during the Winding Down phase?
Stats SL said it will go district by district during this period to systematically embark on the following:
- Verify completeness of coverage in all districts;
- Sync all data on remaining tablets;
- Collect all electronic tablets and power banks;
- Conclude payment of all field staff; and
- Conclude the census process and thank the communities for their cooperation.
By Sallieu S. Kanu