The Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) has spoken out on the issue of enumerators’ allowances following complaints that some have not been paid the allowances owed to them during the training.
Albert Byamugisha, the UBOS Board Chairperson, said in a recorded message that the training allowance was 10,000 shillings per day for the nine days making it Shs90,000.
“The reason why some enumerators haven’t been paid is because the districts haven’t verified the lists. The money is available,” he clarified.
He assured the enumerators that this allowance would be paid before the end of the enumeration exercise.
He further urged those responsible at the district level to verify the lists so that the enumerators can be paid their money.
Another concern came up on the first day of the census when enumerators were presented with a contract showing they would be paid 50,000 for the exercise.
However, UBOS clarified saying enumerators are paid 50,000 shillings per day for 10 days totalling 500,000 Ugandan shillings for 10 days which is not taxable because it is an allowance.
UBOS trained a total of 119,000 enumerators including 500 from Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF) to conduct the census exercise.
Tablets and internet
Another issue that came up was related to data on the tablets where many of the enumerators thought the tablets had malfunctioned.
“We did not have any technology failure, the challenge was with logins since some of the districts hadn’t yet assigned the enumerators their enumeration areas,” explained James Kizza, the Director of Digital Solutions and Data Capability at UBOS.
He added: “Otherwise, we wouldn’t have got any data. Even the Tablets that had any malfunctions were immediately replaced by the supplier.”
He said most of the gadgets that had some issues were around Kampala and Wakiso districts.
“However, there is a replacement policy with the manufacturer and all those gadgets have been replaced so that those people can work.”
According to Kizza, some people are used to checking for Megabytes (MBs) on these tablets.
“That is not the technology we are using. In order to secure our data, we decided to use the telecoms and here MTN and Airtel.”
“Some people have been checking MBs on these tablets, you will not get anything because the technology is very different. What happens is that this gadget can connect to our servers directly if it is set properly and most of the settings have been done.”
He said the SIM cards that had issues were replaced. “You can call or browse on that sim card but you can do our work.”
According to Kizza, so far, over 2.6 million households have been tallied up in the ongoing census.
“It’s Day 05 and the counting continues. Expect enumerators to reach out soon if they haven’t already.”
The data from the National Census is used to improve the job market by evaluating the current rates of employment and joblessness among specific groups within the society.