Census Night: GSS begins homeless households enumeration

The Ghana Statistical Service on Sunday night began enumeration of homeless households, travellers who may spend the night in a car, outdoors, hotels and patients in the hospitals.

The exercise termed as “Census Night” is the reference date for census enumeration and all questions asked during enumeration will relate to that Night.

Professor Samuel Kwabena Anim, the Government Statistician, announced this on Sunday night as part of activities to mark this year’s census night in Accra.

The colourful ceremony witnessed a bonfire and fireworks at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra amidst drumming and dancing led by a brass band team to create awareness of the exercise.

The Police will accompanied the enumerators for the night’s exercise to ensure their safety.

The enumeration exercise will continue from June 28 and end on July 11, 2021.

The listing of structures to herald the main exercise began on Sunday, June 13, 2021.

He said the exercise had been categorised into three- floating population like homeless households, households population and institutional population, comprising of schools, prisons (stable population) and hotel and hospital population (unstable).

The Professor said the exercise was non-partisan and urged all to get involved and be counted for effective and efficient planning purposes.

He said the exercise would provide important information to support evidence-based implementation of the national development agenda and support the tracking of achievements of the Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2063 of the African Union.

During enumeration, a census official (enumerator) will visit each household and administer a questionnaire (collect some information) from the head of household or any other adult in the household.

The enumerator will present their ID card on arrival. The interview to collect information must be conducted in the language that the respondent (household member) can understand.

It is important that everyone takes note of the Census Night and where you spent that night to answer the questions accurately.

All household heads should also make note of all the persons who slept in their household on the Census Night, both usual members of the household and any visitors.

Enumerators will visit households or institutions and collect detailed information on the persons who slept there on Census Night.

It is important that all household heads are able to answer these questions on behalf of others in their absence.

QUESTIONS TO BE ASKED DURING ENUMERATION

The information to be collected covers the following:

1. Travel history of household members who have migrated abroad

2. Socio-demographic characteristics (age, sex, education, ethnicity, religion etc.)

3. Literacy and education

4. Economic activity (employment status, job description, occupation, industry)

5. Difficulties in performing daily living activities (seeing, hearing, walking etc.)

6. Ownership and usage of ICT devices

7. Children born to women 12 years or over

8. Deaths of household members within the past 12 months

9. Housing conditions (construction materials of structure; water supply; asset ownership)

10. Sanitation (disposal of solid and liquid waste)

11. Source of water, lighting and cooking fuel.

Ghana last held a census in 2010. This year’s census was slated for 2020 but was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The current population of Ghana is 31,708,826 as of Sunday, June 27, 2021, based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data.

Ghana’s 2020 population is estimated at 31,072,940 people at mid year according to UN data.

Ghana’s population is equivalent to 0.4% of the total world population.

Ghana ranks number 47 in the list of countries (and dependencies) by population.

The population density in Ghana is 137 per Km2 (354 people per mi2).

The total land area is 227,540 Km2 (87,854 sq. miles)

56.7 % of the population is urban (17,625,567 people in 2020)

The median age in Ghana is 21.5 years.