NSA defends census recruitment strategy

The Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) says it tried by all means to ensure equitable employment opportunities among Namibia’s 121 constituencies for the upcoming national population and housing census.

It added that while the concerns of individuals in certain constituencies are noted, there are only a limited number of job openings.

Appearing on The Evening Review, NSA spokesperson Iipumbu Sakaria said the recruitment process was deliberately inclusive and extensive.

This follows recent complaints in the Windhoek Rural, Katima Mulilo Rural, Tsumkwe and Tsintsabis constituencies over the exclusion of residents from those areas.

“We wanted to cover the entire country. We all know the state of unemployment, so the idea was to spread as far and as wide as possible,” he said.

According to Sakaria, the agency was intent on ensuring that residents from all constituencies were employed by the agency.

“We have certain areas where we have marginalised communities, and what the agency has done deliberately, we decided to allocate a certain percentage to say, part of our recruitment, and x amount must be from marginalised communities.

“For the marginalised communities, we have lowered the requirements simply to include people. In some instances, for example in Tsumkwe, there were many who speak the vernacular but did not meet the requirements to make it.”

Despite the overwhelming interest in the advertised positions, there was a limited number of people the NSA could realistically employ, Sakaria explained.

“We had over 110 000 people who applied. We could only take 13 000, so it was possible that some people would not make it, it’s just numbers. We tried our level best to be as inclusive as possible.”