Authority at the Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-information services on Thursday appeared before the Senate committee on public Autonomous Commission regarding the conduct of the 2022 National Population and Housing census. During the hearing, the Deputy Director General for information coordination; Wilmot Smith said seventeen thousand seventy-one (17,071) applicants are currently going through the vetting process. He narrated that out of this number, two hundred and seventy-six (276) applicants will be selected as supervisors while the rest will be enumerators. He noted that the enumerators would collaborate with local county officials across the country after the vetting process.
The LISGIS boss admitted that there were minor challenges during the recruitment exercise it has been resolved but officials of the entity. During Thursday’s briefing, LISGIS officials were not able to convenience members of the committee as to when the entire process will officially come to an end Director Wilmot stressed that preliminary results will be out by January 2023, but members of the committee were not interested in preliminary results rather final. Against this backdrop, committee members called for an emergency meeting to adequately discuss the actual date the process will end; however, LISGIS officials left the committee room under oath to be back at a subsequent time.
It has been documented that the LISGIS Census employment procedure enraged Liberians, who threatened to stage large-scale demonstrations against the statistics office for employing members of the ruling party. News on alleged fraud that allegedly characterized the recruiting procedure for the National Population and Housing Census by LISGIS has been obtained by Reports231 from a cross-section of Liberians. The majority of the citizens who spoke to Reports231 recently in Monrovia reported that once the exam results were released, they could not see their names next to the testing locations where they had taken the LISGIS Aptitude test.
Meanwhile, Montserrado county senator Abraham Darius Dillon added that the entire leadership of the Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-information services should be arrested and investigated on account of their indictment by the Liberia Anti-Corruption Commission(LACC). He termed the recruitment exercise as reckless and marked by caution due to the high level of corruption at the Institution. The process is expected to officially start Monday, October 24, 2022.
Reported by: Joseph N. Kerkula
Email: jnkerkula@gmail.com
Contact: +231777376826
