Naseer Al-sirajdeen Minna
The federal commissioner of the National population Commission (NPC), in charge of Niger State, Mallam Dattijo Usman has disclosed that the E-recruitment portal for the 2023 population and housing census for prospective adhoc staff has been opened
The commission had earlier launched the E-recruitment portal for the conduct of the 2022 trial census, the excise of which was a huge success with lessons learnt being integrated to put up much- improved E- recruitment portal for the successful conduct of the next population and housing census in April 2023.
Addressing journalists at a press sbreifing at the NAWOJ wing of the IBB Pen house in Minna on Friday Mallam Usman noted that to carry out the task of conducting accurate and reliable census, there was the need for the recruitment of manpower that will carry out the exercise, hence the E- recruitment portal has been launched.
According to the federal commissioner, to ensure that the process of recruiting the needed functionaries to conduct the census is fair and transparent, database that will create and track the identity of all those to be engaged for the census exercise must be put in place.
This he said is to pave the way for computation as well as efficient payment of allowances of all engaged functionaries
He stressed that the number of functionaries to be recruited in each category will depend on the number of available vacancies in each state, which will derive largely from the total number of enumeration areas (EA), in each of the states”.
“To ensure a fair, efficient and transparent recruitment selection process, the honourable federal commissioners (HFC), will, in addition to the existing team at the state level, constitute a local government area recruitment team (LRRT) which will comprise three persons; a) The comptrollers (chairperson),b) one NPC staff who has NPC file number as Desk / Secretariat)c) one local government official” he stated
The federal commissioner pointed out that the state recruitment review team (SRRT), who are already profiled, are to train the local government area recruitment team ( LRRT), in conjunction with officers from the NPC headquarters.
“The local government recruitment team will work to ensure that prospective applicants in hard-to- reach areas, difficult terrains and areas with no network coverage have the opportunity to apply to serve as census functionaries and are appropriately accommodated in the recruitment portal” he added
He maintained that the commission will not compromise the quality of staff that will perform the census activities stressing that more so that the commission was conducting a fully digital census for the first time in the history of census taking in Nigeria.
“Therefore, having good knowledge of the content of the census document, the Technic and the organisation of the census process is key to the success of the 2023 population and housing census.
“This will indeed be a transformative census in all ramifications. The quality of the recruitment process will reflect on the quality of the data to be collected and ultimately the success of the 2023.
“While a good recruitment exercise will not by itself necessarily quarantee a successful census, a badly conducted recruitment process will inevitably lead to problems and increase the risk of an unsuccessful census” the federal commissioner asserted
He assured all Niger State residents that the bulk of the personnel for the 2023 census will be drawn from the communities where they are resident adding that this is to ensure understanding of local languages, elicit acceptance and to remove the huge logistics of moving personnel across the communities.
Consequently, according to him,, every community will have the opportunity of contributing to census workforce thereby ensuring that the people are adequately counted adding that special provision has been made to accommodate People With Disabilty and other special populations in the recruitment process.