15 Mar 2022

Mahalapye Sub-District Census Committee has completed the training of 78 supervisors and 353 enumerators for the upcoming Population and Housing Census to be held from March 18 to 31, 2022. 

Speaking during the closing ceremony of the two weeks supervisors and enumerators training workshop, on Monday March 14, Mahalapye Sub-District Council chairperson, Mr Bantlhasetse Merementsi said the enumeration process was important as it was the stage of census in which data quality assurance process was imbedded. 

Therefore, given the importance and challenging role of enumerators, Mr Merementsi said it was befitting for the supervisors and enumerators to undergo training prior to census, which commenced on March 1 to 14, 2022. 

The training, he said was meant for the trainees to be accustomed with all census process and procedures, which were the doctrines of the conduct of census through which data was collected by interviewing people in their households. 

He said enumerators would be individually entrusted with the responsibilities to collect quality census data across districts, and localities in the country, within their assigned enumeration areas. 

For that reason, he said enumerators were trained on the latest Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing technology, which is a system that facilitated speedy interviewing with built in logistics to do basic data processing simultaneously. 

Additionally, to ensure best selection of enumerators, he said an assessment and selection test was also administered to all trainees at the end of the two weeks training. 

He encouraged the enumerators to perform their job diligently during census, stressing that “you will be expected to physically walk from house to house and or be driven around the enumeration areas assigned to you and sometimes those drives will be very long on difficult terrain and hash weather conditions.” 

“You will be duty bound to ensure that you visit all dwellings in all your assigned enumeration areas and that all households are interviewed. You will, however, have your supervisor and Census Training Officer for support and guidance,” he added. 

The sub-council chairperson thanked all Statistics Botswana census officials, district census officers, matrons, census technical officers and census information technology officers for their contribution towards organising and making the training a success. 

For his part, the acting deputy district commissioner, Mr Bakani Mathumo explained that the training began with a total of 444 trainee enumerators. 

However, he said of the 444 trainee enumerators, 353 enumerators had been trained for all the 353 enumeration areas in the sub-district, as some trainees quit training, along the way, after getting employed elsewhere. 

The closing ceremony was also attended by Mahalapye chief, Kgosi Duncan Segotsi, Sub-District Council senior assistant council secretary, Ms Gomolemo Moepeng and Mahalapye Sub-Land board secretary, Ms Letsholo Monthe. Ends