For the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the 2024 General Population and Housing Census (RGPH), a process that took place from September 19 to November 19, has seen "setbacks that could seriously compromise the integrity of the data".
According to the Prime Minister of UNITA's shadow government, Raul Tati, the RGPH has seen several setbacks, starting with the postponement of the start of the process, initially scheduled for July 19, but starting on September 19 and ending on October 19, and later extended to November 19.
"These setbacks are the result of a deficient preparatory process that conditioned the start of the operation from the outset", the politician said this Friday at a press conference about the census process.
Tati considered that the operation "was marred by irregularities, many of them unacceptable and premeditated, including contradictory statements by the responsible bodies, reflecting, from the outset, blatant failures and disorganization".
The UNITA leader referred to technical, operational and logistical problems, "pointed out by technicians, census agents and attentive citizens in all parts of the country", as the main factors hampering this process.
"The process of recruiting census agents did not follow any transparency criteria and the subsequent training of the agents was incomplete and basically did not include training in the use of the 'tablets'", he declared.
"This, obviously, extended the interview time and made it difficult to cover the area assigned to each agent in the established time", he noted, stressing that all the "evidence points to the failure" of the process.
Across the country, there are reports of citizens who say they were not interviewed by census agents and of residences where only forms were posted without any survey.
According to Raul Tati, these "oversights can extensively compromise the integrity of the data, its reliability" and can "negatively influence the entities responsible for validating census resources".
The UNITA politician also said that it is "unacceptable" in this day and age that the 2024 Census operation serves as "yet another administrative expedient for the regime to maneuver and manipulate population data for electoral purposes".
The National Statistics Institute (INE) announced on November 19 that more than 77 percent of the country's population was registered between September 19 and November 19, and that it will continue collecting data in a recap format until the second half of December, due to the work still to be completed in many urban areas.
