The Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) received 101 009 applications for various field staff positions during the 2023 Population and Housing Census slated for September, while 10 485 applications were received for office-based positions.

According to Statistician General and Chief Executive Officer of the NSA Alex Shimuafeni, they however only require about 13 000 suitably qualified persons to be employed on a temporary basis to carry out the work in the different phases of the census.

“The recruitment of the enumerators who will be trained from 08 to 16 September 2023 will be finalised in due course, after which the NSA will inform successful applicants by publishing their names on the NSA website, social media platforms, as well as at the various constituency offices,” he said.

Shimuafeni made the announcement during a media conference on the progress made so far in the preparations of the 2023 Population and Housing Census, at Swakopmund on Thursday.

Only those applicants who have submitted their applications through the NSA Online Recruitment System as specified in the advertisement will be considered and only those who fully met the requirements will be selected for training, he said.

“To ensure that the NSA complies with the Affirmative Action Act and inclusivity or representativeness of the recruited applicants to the Namibian nation, the NSA will give preference to persons living with disabilities. The selection of persons living with disabilities will be done depending on the nature of the disability and provided that they meet the requirements of the positions applied.”

A quota system, he further said, will be used to enable the recruitment of one per cent each, equating to 131, for the San and Ovahimba communities and two per cent of people living with disabilities.

The census field work will commence from 18 September to 03 November 2023, a time span will include the enumeration as well as the Post Enumeration Survey (PES).

The PES is a quality assurance exercise, a critical aspect of the census as it aims to ensure that NSA disseminates quality statistics, he said.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency