Government Statistician Samuel Kobina Annim has said the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has listed 70% of the targeted eleven million structures whose inhabitants would be counted in this year’s national population and housing census.

He told journalists at a press conference on Sunday, 20 June 2021 that: “The exercise is in two phases”.

“The first phase is what we are currently doing and the essence of doing that exercise is to achieve our primary objective of the census undertaking which has to do with comprehensive and complete coverage”, e explained.

“So, ahead of the enumeration exercise, we combed around the country to ensure that structures at different levels of completion are chalked and listed”, Prof Annim said.

He noted that “ahead of the exercise, what we did was to get a sense of the workload, and we keep on saying that, as a country, we are rolling out a fully digital census and what that means is that, for the first time in our census undertaking, we have benchmarked data, specifically building footprints that we have picked from satellite imagery and other sources from other international partners and ahead of the exercise, we were able to estimate in excess of 11 million structures in the country”.

“As we speak, after the 6th day of data collection, we have covered 70% of these structures.

“This gives us a lot of confidence moving into the remaining four days that the remaining 30% will be covered as we pull our officers out of the field on 23 June 2021”, he added.

The Government Statistician said: “I’m urging all persons in Ghana that our enumerators have been carefully marked to ensure that you go through some protocols if you have some doubts whether they are truly working for Ghana Statistical Service or otherwise”.

“All of them are expected to carry with them the national ID. In the event where they don’t have a national ID, they should have a census ID card”.

“In the event that they are using a letter of introduction from the Ghana Statistical Service, respondents are to demand the national ID that all of us are conversant with.”

“In addition to that, they should come with their reflective jacket as the honourable minister indicated.

“Our reflective jacket is light blue and the inscription is clearly on it with the logo of the census and the 2020 round of population and housing census behind”.

“They should also carry on them, a cup indicating the Ghana Statistical Service and, for that matter, the census undertaking.”