The Ghana Statistical Service is to conduct the Population and Housing Census (PHC) next year.

The 2020 census was previously scheduled to take place on March 15, but had to be postponed twice. The GSS first rescheduled the survey to May 15, before it later postponed the exercise to June 28, for a mapping exercise, and to build quality data for the main census.

The Government Statistician, Professor Samuel Kobina Annim, speaking to the press in Accra yesterday, said, due to the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), training activities and events that would be experienced during this year’s electioneering processes, the census has been postponed to 2021.

“Per the training schedule and also the activities that are ahead of us as a country, which is characterized by a lot of mobility, we have ruled out the possibility of having the census in the year 2020,” he said.

“With certainty, the National Steering Committee is going to support the Statistical Service to have the census done in the first half of 2021,” he added.

Professor Annim also mentioned that GSS have been engaging the Ghana Education Service (GES), to know the right time to commence a training exercise for a total of 8,350 enumerators who would be used for the 2021 census.

“We have opened discussions with the Ghana Education Service on the appropriate time for this exercise. The reason being that, we will need the facilities of the senior high schools to train the people that we have to put on field,” he mentioned.

He explained that “Because of the capacity we require for this engagement and also lessons learnt that we have obtained from our experience with COVID-19, we are going to roll out both virtual and face-to-face training,” he stated.

“Starting from the month of October we are going to engage our 950 national trainers, and from the month of November, 2020, we are going to start engaging the regional trainers,” he further stated.

The PHC is conducted in Ghana every 10 years, but it would be recalled that, as a result of the 1939-45 World War, the conduct of the 1941 was affected, thereby, interrupting the series.

However, in post-independence Ghana, five population censuses have been conducted; the first was done in 1960, followed by the 1970, 1984, 2000 censuses, with the last being held in 2010.

Per the 10-year interval arrangement, the sixth post-independence census was to be conducted this year, with the primary goal of updating the statistical information on the characteristics of the population of Ghana.

When the last census was conducted in 2010, the country’s population stood at 24,658,823, which was indication of a 30.4 per cent over the 2000 population figure of 18,912,079, while the current population is estimated to be about 31 million.