03 Dec 2018

Chobe District commissioner, Mr Keabetswe Lesiela, has underscored the need for utilisation of population figures as a guide to national development.

When officially opening Chobe District population seminar in Kasane recently, Mr Lesiela noted that accurate and up to date population figures allowed for well-informed developmental decisions.

The population and development coordinator, Ms Onalethata Phikane, said the seminar was meant to evaluate availability and accessibility of data as a tool for development and also establish if the data was usable as well as get feedback on recommendations made in previous seminars.

When giving feedback from last year’s seminar, the district population officer, Ms Olefile Maikaelelo, stated that the district faced a challenge of untimely and late registration of vital statistics.

She attributed the late registration to inaccessibility of facilities and lack of promptness to register, especially regarding registrations of deaths that occur outside health facilities.

Ms Maikaelelo, however, said there had been some measures put in place in an attempt to mitigate such challenges, citing outreaches by the Civil and National Registration, where they visited one village per week to sensitise the pubic on the importance of registration.

Speaking on behalf of Statistics Botswana, census and demography statistician, Mr Emmanuel Otukile emphasised the importance of data collection, storage and management.

He said data informed development decisions, giving an example of the Kazungula Bridge that being built to ease the traffic flow from Botswana to Zambia and vice versa.

Participants had an opportunity to discuss how data affected sectors such as developers, implementers and consumers as well as how they relate to data both positively and negatively.

From their discussions, they gathered that mismanagement of data, lack of standardised tools for data collection as well as lack of education on the importance of data were hindrances to the better management of data.

Recommendations made included to educate and sensitise the public on importance and usage of data, provision of strong monitoring and evaluation systems and development of a standardised tools for data collection. ENDS