Posted: Daily Guide | Wednesday, 02 February 2011
www.dailyguideghana.com
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
Ghanaians have criticized the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) for its inability to release details of the 2010 population and housing census.
A scheduled press conference to announce the provisional figures for last year’s census on Monday was suddenly called off after officers of the GSS spent several hours ‘consulting’ at the Information Ministry.
The Government Statistician, Dr. Grace Bediako, called the press conference on Monday apparently to announce the provisional results of the census.
However, after Dr. Bediako allegedly held a meeting with the Information Minister, they agreed to call off the exercise with the explanation that technical reasons prevented them from releasing the results.
Journalists who were invited to cover the event were left wondering for sometime what was going on until they received their ‘soli envelopes’ and left for their offices.
One of the several people who have started raising issues about the unexplained reasons for cancelling the release of the census results is General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Kwadwo Owusu-Afriyie, who says he has reason to believe that there is a deliberate ploy by government to massage the census figures, hence the undue delay.
In an interview with DAILY GUIDE yesterday, Mr. Owusu Afriyie said “there is a reason that they want to bloat the Volta regional figures so that it comes closer to that of Ashanti region.”
According to him, the situation has created a state of uneasiness at the Statistical Service since some of the individuals and technical persons there are not happy with the development.
Mr. Owusu-Afriyie said, “I hope that is not true because if they are, then it will raise a whole lot of concern and so I want to believe that it is not true.”
That notwithstanding, the NPP secretary said, “We are waiting with keen interest (to see) the figures that are going to emanate from it representing the Volta regional figures.”
He noted: “I quite remember that again we got this information that long after the thing had closed, they were still registering people or counting people in the Volta region and when they were asked they said ‘oh it is normal’ and that they were doing a mopping up exercise.”
He could not understand why that mopping up was not done in any other region apart from the Volta region, noting, “and so it gives us cause for concern.
Like I said, I want to believe that it is not true that they want to increase the Volta regional figures and I pray that my fears are not confirmed.”
The NPP General Secretary, however, warned: “But if it comes out that that is what the figures are, we are not going to take kindly to that.”
That, he said, was because “everybody knows, every child knows that the Volta regional figures do not come anywhere near those for the Ashanti region. At least, all the election results that we have known and we have seen confirm that.
“So if they want to sit there and massage the figures in the Volta region so that it comes closer to that of the Ashanti region or …, then obviously, it’s not going to go down well for the people of this country. So they should be very careful,” he warned.
Mr. Owusu-Afriyie, popularly called Sir John, strongly believes that the only thing that would make the government and its agencies do such a thing would be for electoral purposes, saying, “If you care to know every election that we have had, they deliberately increased the Volta region margin so that it would cancel some of the results that come from the Ashanti region.
“So sometimes you hear Ketu North and Ketu South and the results that come from there it would cancel that of Ashanti. This is what they have always done in the years 1992 and the year 2000.
That has always been their modus operandi, even 2004 and 2008, they did the same thing. But this time round everybody knows the population of Volta region doesn’t come anywhere near Ashanti region,” he noted.
“So they should be careful and we hear that people are not happy that they want to touch the figures,” and “if that’s what they are going to do, we wait with keen interest and hope and pray that what we hear is not true,” he stated.