The Ghana Statistical Association (GSA) has pledged its support for the new Government Statistician (GS) Professor Samuel Kobina Annim and the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) in efforts to produce accurate, reliable and quality statistics for informed decision making.

Professor Nicholas N. N. Nsowah-Nuamah, the President of the Association, who made the pledge, said the GSS could tap the human resource of the GSA in its bid to deliver quality statistics to the nation.

He assured the GSS that, members of the Association will, at all times, be willing to lend their support to him.

Prof. Nsowah-Nuamah was speaking during a courtesy call on the Government Statistician to introduce GSA executives to him.

He spoke about plans to establish the Institute of Chartered Statisticians (ICS) in Ghana.

The GS is a Fellow of the Association as enshrined in the Constitution, while the two Deputy Government Statisticians, Mrs Araba Forson and Mr David Kombat are also part of the Executives of the Association.

The GSA would be having its second International Statistics Conference later this year in collaboration with the GSS.

The Organizing Secretary for Northern Sector, Dr. Smart Sarpong, on his part, laid emphasis on the collaboration between the GSA and the GSS, saying it was in that spirit of collaboration that “we celebrated the 2018 Africa Statistics Day and hosted the Statistics Conference”.

According to him, some media houses invited some GSA representatives to train their journalists on understanding Statistics, and how to communicate same to the public.

He also said GSA would always be in a better position to defend the good works of the GSS as “independent data producer” for the country.

The Vice President of the GSA, for the Northern Sector of Ghana, Prof Saeed Bashiru, emphasized on the need to have strong collaboration between Academia and Industry.

He was quick to add that it was in that regard that GSA was championing same and needed the support from all, including the GSS, to succeed.

Professor Nicholas N. N. Nsowah-Nuamah, the Government Statistician, said he was happy for the support.

He said there was the need to have “functional engagement” so as to monitor data quality in the country.

He said the GSS have plans to train about 600 personnel in STATA and CSPRO statistics software to be stationed at the district levels to be able to clean and run analysis of the data in the upcoming Population and Housing Census.

He said there was also plans to start ranking the MMDAs in their level of data production and usage as a basis for decision making by the assemblies and implored the GSA to position itself for that exercise as an independent body.

He bemoaned the situation where technical persons, or experts, were still being brought from outside the country to provide technical support to the GSS after all these years, and said that this should end given the expertise that we had within Ghana, in the GSA and beyond.

The GS was extremely delighted at the initiatives of the GSA and pledged his readiness to liaise with it in his quest for quality data in the country.

He promised to give them a draft Statistics bill document for their study and input before it is laid before Parliament.