The Philippine Statistics Authority Negros Oriental is appealing for cooperation from the public once it rolls out the 2020 Census of Population and Housing in May.
PSA Provincial Head Engr. Ariel Fortuito announced that the CPH will start nationwide on May 4, which will involve more than 100,000 enumerators who are mostly teachers of the Department of Education.
“We”ºre calling on the people in Negros Oriental to support the CPH. How can each person support this? Foremost, when a PSA staff comes to knock on your households, entertain him at least. Answer the questions correctly. And if possible, keep your dogs on leash,” Fortuito said.
The 2020 CPH is a nationwide undertaking pursuant to Batas Pambansa 72, Executive Order No. 352 and R.A. 10625.
PSA is the agency mandated to carry out the census of population.
The people’s response to the 2020 CPH is mandatory under R.A. 10625.
Some of the data that will be gathered during the census this year include size and geographical distribution of the population, population composition (sex, age, marital status), education and literacy, birth registration, religion, ethnicity, and functional difficulty.
On the other hand, additional information will also be gathered from some sample households.
These include occupation, industry, class of worker, place of work, fertility indicators, housing characteristics, manner of garbage disposal, type of toilet facility, type of fuel for lighting and cooking, main source of water supply, land ownership, presence of operator in crop farming, livestock and poultry raising, aquaculture, and fishing, language/dialect generally spoken at home, location where the household intends to reside five years from now, household conveniences ownership, ICT devices ownership, vehicles ownership, type/s of internet access available at home, and location where the household member/s use the internet in the last three months.
Fortuito added that the conduct of the census in May will be “house-to -house.”
The PSA official cited they are aiming to get an accurate data on the census population and housing, noting that the data generated from the census is important for government policy-makers in formulating economic and development plans for the country.
“The objective of conducting CPH is critical because the government executives, policy-makers, decision-makers, and planners will update population and housing data. This is a comprehensive data collection and this is the only data collection to be conducted nationwide up to the household level,” Fortuito emphasized.
PSA here has undertaken some initial steps in preparation for the 2020 CPH, such as geo-tagging which were carried out two years ago to ensure the accuracy in conducting the census.
PSA also organized the Census Board per municipality chaired by the local chief executive in December 2019.
The local census board will convene to discuss potential issues on the conduct of CPH especially in hinterland areas or in communities with affected by insurgency and map out possible strategies with the agency to address it.
“We can ask for the assistance of the Census Board including Philippine National Police if there is a need. We are going to settle it with the locality to ascertain if there is a need for security assistance. If the area is really identified as ‘very critical’ or ‘cannot be enumerated’ at the time of the census, we will do something about it – either head count or PSA personnel will go together to saturate the area,” Fortuito explained.
“As to typhoon or whatever circumstances, we have risk registry in place,” he added.
Aside from this, Fortuito also shared plans to meet with local DepEd officials to determine the number of teaching personnel who will be assigned as enumerators, discuss other concerns especially in conflict-affected areas and to find out also if there is a need to hire additional enumerators who are not part of DepEd.
Meanwhile, the training for enumerators, supervisors and other personnel involved in the conduct of the 2020 CPH will begin on March 30 until May 2 this year.
For now, Fortuito stressed the need for massive information dissemination to raise public awareness on the census.
PSA is ready to hold dialogues with barangay officials and homeowner association presidents to elicit their support.
He also appealed to the members of the media to continuously share this information and PSA’s appeal cooperation to the public.
PSA assures that all information gathered in the 2020 CPH will be strictly confidential. (ral/PIA7-NegOr)
