Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) has come out to defend the recruitment process of enumerators stating that there was no form of favouritism in the exercise.
MacDonald George Obudho, Director Population and social statistics, has said that the process of hiring enumerators was properly guarded.
Obudho also claimed that the interview papers were well manned with no leakages reported. He reiterated that the chiefs and the assistant chiefs did not have any power to qualify any candidate to the enumerator job.
” A Candidate comes and fills in a register and a serial number is generated. When the application is being taken to the next level, it is taken together with the register and we are able to confirm that all this applicants,whose serial have been generated here, their application requests are submitted,” Obudho stated.
Macdonald Obudho: There was no favoritism during the recruitment process #NewsGang pic.twitter.com/ehnk27AER7
— Citizen TV Kenya (@citizentvkenya) August 15, 2019
There has been an outcry in different parts of the country over the recruitment process of census officials. On Thursday, Kangemi residents stormed an enumerators’ training centre. Led by Westlands MP Tim Wanyonyi, they vowed that they will not allow foreigners to count them. They argued that most of the enumerators are from Eastlands.
Obudho blamed wrong information being circulated as the cause of the public uproar. He insisted that the Census process has helped fill the unemployment gap. He said that 163,400 people have so far been recruited and majorly youths between the age of 18-35.
Macdonald Obudho: We have an issue with unemployment in this country; there are many people who have gone to school but have no jobs, the census exercise is not going to solve that problem fully #NewsGang pic.twitter.com/d1ByL7ZB3l
— Citizen TV Kenya (@citizentvkenya) August 15, 2019
The exercise is set to be conducted on August 24 and 25, 2019.