The Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) has announced that it has started the mass recruitment of over 13,000 Census field staff, including Enumerators, Enumeration Supervisors, Data Clerks, and IT Field Technicians, to conduct the 2023 Population and Housing Census.
“This recruitment initiative aims to engage enthusiastic individuals from diverse backgrounds to join the census team, ensuring adequate coverage and efficient data collection across every corner of our nation. These temporary roles will provide a unique opportunity for citizens to contribute to a crucial national project while gaining valuable experience and skills,” said Alex Shimuafeni, NSA Statistician-General and CEO, on Thursday.
He said the recruitment for 38 office-based positions, such as Statisticians, Application Programmers, Junior Legal Advisors, Administrative Assistants, System Administrators, Web Developers, Publicity Officers, and Payroll Administrators, has been concluded.
“The office is currently finalizing the recruitment process in terms of selection, contracting, onboarding, as well as deployment of successful candidates to their workstations. In addition to the above, NSA has successfully recruited 14 Regional Human Resources Officers who have already started their duties at the NSA head office,” said the NSA Statistician-General and CEO.
He also announced that the NSA will be sourcing transport services from private individuals for the census period, with 2,837 vehicles required.
“The acquiring of transport services from individuals means that the NSA will be utilizing private individuals’ vehicles, where they will be driving their own vehicles or assigning drivers to their vehicles. This approach of providing transport services to the census project also speaks to the notion of a national project, as we will have participation at constituency levels, as the vehicles used to transport the enumerators will be sourced from constituency levels,” Shimuafeni said.
“We would therefore like to inform those individuals who have vehicles that meet our specifications to make them available for the population and housing census, for which they will be compensated.”
The 2021 Population and Housing Census (PHC) will be conducted in August of this year.
This decision comes after Finance Minister Ipumbu Shiimi allocated N$706 million to the NSA in his N$84-billion budget for the 2023/24 financial year to conduct the long-overdue survey.
Namibia’s Population and Housing Census was originally scheduled for August 2021 but was postponed to August 2022 due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Namibia conducts a population and housing census every 10 years to gather essential data on the country’s demographic and economic landscape.
The results of the survey are crucial for policy-making, resource allocation, and planning for the country’s development.
