In the recent recruitment process for temporary employees who will collect data countrywide in the upcoming National Census exercise, the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) opted for a process of making people apply online for the said opportunities.
As a result thousands of people thronged internet cafes, where they spent money, in order to try their luck at landing a temporary job at the NSA.
However NSA says that the online application process was not done in order to cut costs on its side but make potential employees bear the cost of the recruitment process.
Rather, NSA says, members of the public made their own choice to apply and carry the costs.
Responding to questions from Omutumwa as to whether it was fair for NSA to cut costs on its part by phasing out the process of printing hard copy application forms and distributing them to regional council constituencies countrywide, NSA’s spokesperson Mr Sakaria Iipumbu said this was not the case.
“No, online applications were NOT done to cut costs for the NSA. The 2023 census is a spatially digitally enabled census and enumerators will have to be able to navigate the electronic tools needed for census collection,” Iipumbu said.
“NSA has not passed the bill to the people. Citizens normally make their own efforts to apply for positions countrywide.”
However Tshoombe Malakia, a member of the public, said he spent money in trying to apply online but he did not manage to submit his application.
“Normally when vacancies are announced such as those by government agencies, we are told by our regional councilor to get forms at his office,” Malakia said. “But with this online thing of the NSA we tried accessing the internet through smart phones, but it was costing us a lot of credit with no success.
“In the end we decided to travel all the way to Ruacana where there are internet cafes.
“But when we got there the internet cafes were full of people trying to get access to the internet. For hours I stood around but I did not get the chance.”
According to Malakia, it was not fair that poor people had to be made to bear costs which ordinarily should be borne by a government agency.
However Iipumbu denied this by saying this was not a way of selfishly passing on the burden to someone else, who is even in a worse economic situation than NSA.
“As indicated, NSA did not pass any costs to people; NSA simply advertised vacancies to which a huge number of applicants applied,” Iipumbu maintained.
A Census is a process of counting all people in a country and making a note of their living conditions. It is done every 10 years to update the country’s statistics. The 2023 Census begins on 18 September and ends on 3 November 2023 to update the country’s statistics through household interviews for everyone in Namibia.
In the photo: Two months to go to be counted.
