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Cape Town - South Africans might get an extra public holiday in 2011 if national census day is declared a public holiday.
The proposal for a public holiday – in the hope that people would be home that day – has arisen from increasing political insistence that next year's population census should be more accurate than those of previous years.
Howard Gabriels, chairperson of the statutory Statistics Council in South Africa, told the standing committee on finance on Wednesday that he nevertheless believed the holiday proposal would do more harm than good.
He said it had become a trend in South Africa for holidays to fall alongside weekends so that everyone could have a long weekend. Therefore no one would be found at home – everyone would be on the beach.
On the other hand, statistician general Pali Lehohla said the key to a more accurate count was for people to be home, so that they could be enumerated that evening.
In the 1996 census an estimated 10% of the population had not been counted.
In the 2001 census the omission was an estimated 17%.
Lehohla said that in order to prevent a similar situation, a public holiday would need to be declared – or four times as many workers (up to 400 000) would have to be employed to help with the counting.
About 13 million households need to be surveyed.
- Sake24.com
