Godfrey Nabongo Deputy Executive Director for Uganda Bureau Of Statistics has asked local government leaders to resolve boundary conflicts ahead of the national population census.
He noted that conflicts are posing a challenge to some of the Geographical Information Systems teams which are already in field to carry on with mapping which is to aid in acquiring national statistics.
The technology driven population census as announced on Monday last week is scheduled to take place next year 2024 in May.
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During celebrations of the world Geography Information Systems day at the Statistics house on Wednesday, Nabongo said that the teams in field have made strides in rural places where mapping has been actively ongoing.
Significant progress specifically in geo-mapping households and enumeration area boundaries, with completion reaching approximately 62percent .
However, some challenges have come up where locals misunderstood the intentions of the teams dragging them along into boundary disputes .
Some of the areas identified so far experiencing conflict are in Northern Uganda and West Nile where some sub counties are not clearly defined as to where they fall.
“The people should know that mapping is purely for the purpose of development , and we are not party to the disputes . We ask local government leaders to help us resolve boundary conflicts ahead of the census,” noted Nabongo.
With the aid of GIS this time , the census will have more specific details of house and projects ownership by being able to tell whose coffee tree is that or piggery farm among others.
In addition, Nabongo noted that incorporating GIS will make the census more accurate, give it wide coverage as well as improve the timeliness of results .
All this comes in timely as the nation at the moment prides itself in evident strides into a digital era especially with numerous adoptions after the pandemic.
The bureau hopes to have completed this exercise by January with the cities being among the last areas for geo mapping due to rapid infra structural development within.
The census this year will put paper based questionnaires behind us as the enumerators will carry around tablets that immediately feed the main data servers with information covered .