GNHR to complete data collection on Upper West this month

  From Musah Umar Farouq, Wa. The Ghana National Household Registry is expected to complete data collection for the Upper West Region by the third week of this month. The GNHR is collecting data on households in communities, detailing individuals’ living standards – including poverty levels – in a comprehensive exercise that would help to […]

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From Musah Umar Farouq, Wa.

The Ghana National Household Registry is expected to complete data collection for the Upper West Region by the third week of this month.

The GNHR is collecting data on households in communities, detailing individuals’ living standards – including poverty levels – in a comprehensive exercise that would help to structure, among others, social protection interventions across the country.

The exercise, launched on August 1 this year in Wa in the Upper West Region, began with the Upper West Region, and officials expect to collect data in both the Upper East and Northern regions before the close of 2016.

The exercise, which is under the Ministry of Gender and Social Protection, was halted for nearly a month after the launch, when the software being used in the data collection developed problems.

Mr. Robert Austin, National Coordinator of the GNHR, said more than 80,000 households had been captured across the 11 districts of the Upper West Region, as of the close of last Thursday, after the software problem was resolved.

With more than 70 per cent of the region covered, Mr. Austin expressed the hope during a courtesy call on Upper West Regional Minister, Alhaji Amin Amidu Sulemani, that the exercise could be completed within the next three weeks.

He said the data being collected would help policy makers in designing the appropriate interventions for the various strata of society.

He said the data would also come in handy for the relevant authorities in crafting social intervention programmes, intended to bridge the gap between the cash-rich and cash-poor.

The Regional Minister expressed satisfaction with the professional standards and checks within the system, which, he said, had brought out satisfactory results from the staff deployed for the exercise.

Data, including name, age, and income levels of individual household members, is being fed into a centralised national data system that would provide a comprehensive breakdown of the structure of the Ghanaian society.

The exercise also requires the bio data of household members, and officials said the locally-developed software system eliminates the chances of counting an individual twice or more.

Some 361 staff, which includes field enumerators, has been deployed for the ongoing exercise in the Upper West Region.

Enumerators visit households and take the pictures and fingerprints of the persons they interview, and pictures of their living environments, all of which are fed into the data system, which also captures a map of the movement of the individual enumerators.

These features of the specially-designed tablets, Mr. Austin said, were part of a self-checking system to ensure that enumerators complied with the demands of the exercise religiously.

The GNHR is, perhaps, the most comprehensive data on the national population and its structure.

The exercise is being funded by the World Bank-sponsored Ghana Social Opportunities Project (GSOP), an initiative set up to promote the creation of job opportunities to enhance the welfare of citizens.

 

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