Census workers still owed money

A year after Namibia’s 2011 census, a number of enumerators say they’ve yet to receive full payment for their work.

A group from Ondangwa who contacted Namibian Sun last week said they had only received 40% of the payment promised to them by the National Planning Commission (NPC). The group, who claimed to represent ten others, said some were also owed subsistence and travel money for transport between Ondangwa and Windhoek during the census.

“We were supposed to get N$5 000 in total, but only got N$2 000. The rest was to be paid in later. Though this never happened in a number of cases and they haven’t given us any reasons why,” one of the enumerators said on condition of anonymity.

“To make matters worse, since Central Statistical Office (CSO) moved from the NPC, we haven’t been able to get through to anyone to address our concerns,” he said.

The NPC’s Central Statistical Office was earlier this year separated from the government planning body to form the independent Namibia Statistics Agency.

Responding to the enumerators’ concerns, NPC spokesperson Ester Paulus said yesterday that the organization was still in the process of settling these payments.

The reason for non-payment thus far, she said, was that a number of enumerators had submitted incomplete claim forms.

“There have been two announcements in the media thus far, calling on those who weren’t paid to contact their regional councils. A meeting is being held this week again to decide on a final solution, though at present they can speak to either the Statistician or Geographical Information System Analyst at the regional councils,” Paulus said.