The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has appealed to members of the public to cooperate with its field officers during the upcoming Population and Housing Census (PHC) and give accurate information to ensure a successful exercise.

Mr Owusu Kagya, Head of Census Methodology at the GSS, who made the appeal, said it was a national exercise, and all the citizens must see it as such and willingly cooperate with the field officers to ensure that credible data were gathered to support national development planning activities.

He made the appeal while making a presentation on the upcoming PHC at a day’s training workshop for journalists in Tamale.

The workshop, attended by journalists drawn from the Northern, North East, Savannah, Upper East, Upper West and Oti Regions, was to initiate sustained and effective engagements with media houses across the country and provide journalists with the tools needed to report well on the PHC.

The GSS is preparing to conduct the PHC later this year, and it will deploy a total of 51,894 field officers to all communities across the country to collect the needed information from the citizenry for the exercise.

The PHC will provide important information to support evidence-based implementation of the national development agenda and support the tracking of national and global development goals.

There are concerns that during the PHC, some people may be hesitant to provide the needed information to field officers because of certain beliefs and misconceptions, a situation, which will affect the success of the exercise.

Mr Kagya said “The public should cooperate and give reliable information to field officers. If you give information that is not reliable, then it is the district, region and Ghana that suffer, and so my appeal is that we all see this as a national exercise and give the right information to the officers so that Ghana can make use of these data to develop.”

He said questions to be asked as part of the PHC covered 13 thematic areas including; socio-demographic characteristics of the population, employment status amongst others.