Over 17 000 households refused to be counted

By Khanyisa Tabata
31 October 2011

Statistics South Africa Statistician General Pali Lehohla today briefed the media about the Stats SA Mop-up phase as this year’s Census 2011 comes to an end today.

Lehohla said operations on the ground indicate that there still houses that have not been counted. He said 98.8%enumaration areas were visited by field staff over the past 21 days.

“The focus for the statistical agency now moves to the payment of fieldworkers, collection of all questionnaires with the payment for the field workers starting on the 10th of November 2011.

“Each field worker will be paid R5000 while supervisors will be paid R7500 each,” said Lohohla.

Lehohla said that they will be embarking on a mop-up phase, the statistical agency going to escalate their enforcement against those who refuse to be counted.

“To date there are 17 000 refusals that had been registered during the population and housing around the country,” said Lehohla.

“An independent team has been established to go to the field to conduct Post Enumeration Survey, a quality check exercise to determine among other things the census coverage and measure the undercount.

“What we are certain about is that the census 2011 will be able to give the government population trends, demographic trends, the level intern migration and income levels of our country,” said Lehohla.

The results for this year’s census are expected to be announced in November 2012.