The National Assembly, with 120 votes, asked the State Comptroller General’s Office to audit the Population, Housing and Community Census process due to the detection of serious administrative failures in the areas of recruitment, cartographic updating, training, registration, communication and security.
The legislative chamber welcomed the report prepared by the Commission for Transparency, Citizen Participation and Social Control, regarding the inspection of the VIII National Census of Population, VII of Housing and I of Communities, in whose conclusions budget failures, insecurities and violations are noted, as well as lack of payment to the census takers.
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The report requests the Comptroller’s Office to audit the management of the executive director of the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC), Roberto Castillo, and that the special examination should focus on economic execution.
The execution of the census was financed with $80 million by a loan from the World Bank, for which the assembly members warn of a new indebtedness for the country. The objective of the process was to improve the national statistical capacity through the production and dissemination of updated, reliable and accessible economic and sociodemographic statistics to the citizenry, of which the execution of the investment is not transparently known, the report indicates.
The online census began on October 1, 2022, and from November 7 to December 18 it was face-to-face. But according to the legislators, the census has not yet concluded and there were even assembly members such as Nathalie Viteri (PSC) who denounced that she was never censused either in Guayaquil, where she is her habitual residence, or in Quito, where she lives temporarily for her work as a legislator.
Pachakutik assemblywoman Dina Farinango pointed out that the census had no planning to obtain the country’s data such as the number of inhabitants, which had serious shortcomings and even, she said, that it is known that 7% of the population is missing to be censused; In addition, there is a lack of payment to the people who participated in this process.
Ferdinan Álvarez, president of the Citizen Participation Commission, pointed out that this process meant a high cost for the country due to the multiple shortcomings detected, such as not having previously carried out a publicity process for the knowledge of the citizenry, which has caused many Ecuadorians to feel excluded, insecurity for census takers and non-payment of their salaries.
Corrective actions
In the resolution approved by Parliament, this January 12, the Ministry of Labor is requested to carry out corrective actions in order to verify compliance with the payment of remunerations, legal benefits and other contractual clauses that the INEC signed with all the personnel who work and worked within the framework of the process of the VIII National Population Census, VII of Housing and I of Communities.
That in the event that the census is extended to 2023, the legislature urges the INEC to take corrective measures, because it was evidenced that they have not contemplated or budgeted for this contingent to extend it, there being a risk that the census, due to its implementation model, Samples will be obtained but not a universal count of the population, which would affect the implementation of public policies.
Half a million homes are still pending a census and it will be done in this month of January 2023
Among the findings, it stands out that the communication campaign was carried out extemporaneously, with which there is no true awareness and socialization of the process towards the Ecuadorian people, limiting self-identification.
That there are serious shortcomings in the process of updating the census cartography, which is the cause of problems in the field operation that is carried out in the registration stage.
Failures and incidents in the administrative, operational and logistical processes, which, added to the previous points, will cause under-coverage, statistical invisibility and errors in the production of the most important statistical operation in the country.
Therefore, they urgently recommend carrying out an independent post-census survey at the INEC with international observers, so that the evident coverage and quality problems of the current census can be verified.(YO)
Source: Eluniverso
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