CAN YOU IMAGINE that the Liberia Institute for Geo-Information Services, LISGIS, has proven incapable of successfully organizing and conducting the 2022 National Population Census on the scheduled date? What a big shame!
WITHOUT MINCING WORDS, officials of that government agency have demonstrated a high degree of ineptitude in handling the census process and do not deserve to be entrusted with such a very important national exercise.
THEIR HANDLING OF the entire process, from the recruitment of enumerators to the administering of aptitude tests, was accompanied by controversies and claims of fraud.
THE LISGIS OFFICIALS have also proven to be untrustworthy. They make money-related promises that they are yet to fulfill.
FOR EXAMPLE, MORE than three months ago the Agency conducted a census-related forum for news editors from urban and rural Liberia in Monrovia and promised to pay the participants an unspecified amount of sitting fees through their respective mobile money accounts, but as we speak, not a single participant has received a dime from LISGIS.
AS WE SPEAK, census enumerators across the country are disillusioned because LISGIS has reneged on its promise to give each of them US$50 or more for feeding and other expenses, a major contributing factor that stalled the census exercise during the weekend. What a shame!!
BEFORE THEN, THERE were a series of media reports of census workers expressing their anger through protests across the country. In some of the places, like in Barclayville, Grand Kru County, protesters destroyed census materials, including billboards in demand of monies that they were promised.
UP TO THE day of the census, the enumerators remained obstinate on their demands for payment and so showed little interest in the counting exercise.
AS IF TO add insult to injury, businesses were shut down and people across the country stayed home the whole day on Friday, November 11, 2022, because President George Weah, currently abroad, had declared it ‘Census holiday,’ to ensure that every citizen was counted, but the census holiday turned out to be a waste of people’s precious time.
CITIZENS, WHO SUPPOSED to have gone on their daily hustle amidst the high cost of living stayed home for several hours with the hope to be counted, but to their utmost surprise, their waiting was in vain as there were no signs of LISGIS enumerators almost everywhere although the Agency in a press statement on late Friday said it had deployed more than fifteen thousand enumerators for the census exercise.
IN OUR VIEW, the census was stalled as a result of the gross incompetence and untrustworthiness of the LISGIS officials.
