INEC tries to locate in these last hours those who have not yet been registered

The 8th Population Census, 7th Housing Census and 1st Communities Census comes to an end this Sunday, December 18, after an online census stage –which lasted from October 1 to 30– and the stage face-to-face – which started on November 7 at the national level.

This Sunday it is expected that the census takers will reach sectors that have not yet been visited, for example, areas in the north of Guayaquil such as Mapasingue east. “They haven’t arrived here yet, we hope that this weekend, which is the last, they come,” said María Carpio.

Police accompany the work of census takers in conflictive sectors of Guayaquil

Another inhabitant of the sector, Teresa Maldonado, was registered online. “At my job (public institution) they told us that we had to register online and I did so, I had no problems with the questions, it was very fast,” she said.

In other sectors, there were doubts regarding some questions, such as question 37, which is optional: How do you identify according to your gender?:

• Male
• Female
• Trans
• Other
• Do not know not answer

A citizen who took the census in person, but preferred not to identify herself, assured that an elderly person in her home had problems with that question. “When they asked her the question, she got a little uncomfortable and angry.” They did not ask other relatives the question because they had previously answered that they were married when they were asked about their marital status or how many children they had. “I guess that’s why the gender question was superfluous,” she said.

In Durán, when the census taker asked a married couple how they receive water, whether through pipes or other means, “I told them: No, here the question is not how the water gets to me, but when the water gets to me,” they commented. .

Meanwhile, there are places where the census takers have not found the inhabitants at home. In these cases, the INEC staff left a written visit notice with the name and cell phone number of the census taker so that the homeowner can communicate and coordinate the time and date of the new visit urgently, since the process It will end this Sunday.

“I already called them, but they still haven’t visited me again,” said a citizen who lives in one of the urbanizations in the La Aurora sector this Saturday, December 17.

The questions you must answer in the Ecuador census

Roberto Castillo, executive director of the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC), highlighted that in the face-to-face stage the census reached all corners of the country thanks to the team of census takers and also highlighted the results.

The online census, for example, reached more than 2.3 million people, as reported by the INEC on November 7, the date the face-to-face stage began. The provinces with the greatest use of this modality were Guayas, Pichincha and Manabí, October 20 was the day with the highest number of records.

During the 527 hours that the online Census was enabled, there was no vulnerability to the computer system, the Institute assured. “The security implemented by the INEC (perimeter security in the cloud, monitoring of network events and data protection through encryption, depersonalization and anonymization following international standards) made it possible to detect and block more than 2 million anomalous accesses and guarantee the integrity of the information,” he explained.

For example, Pablo León, from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) of Chile, stated that it was interesting to observe how the different problems typical of the process were resolved.

David Pinilla, from the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) of Colombia, also highlighted the exercise of sharing the details of the census process directly with the public.

However, the process has not been without its critics. In days gone by, a group of census takers claimed and held a sit-in in Guayaquil because INEC supposedly had not canceled their salary. They gathered with banners outside the La Plata building, INEC’s regional headquarters.

In this regard, the INEC published an official statement on Friday, December 16, in which they announced that that day they had already canceled the personnel hired for the census operation.

“There was a delay of hours in the disbursement that was contemplated for December 15, this due to administrative issues,” explained the INEC, which regretted the inconvenience caused and apologized to its census takers. (YO)