Africa-Press – Angola. UNITA said that the 2024 Population Census in Angola “was a disaster”, due to the constraints registered that compromise its integrity, and that the process was an expedient to “manipulate population data” for electoral purposes.
For the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA, the largest opposition party), the General Population and Housing Census (RGPH) 2024, a process that took place from September 19 to November 19, registered “setbacks that could extensively compromise the integrity of the data”.
According to the Prime Minister of the UNITA shadow government, Raul Tati, the RGPH experienced several disruptions, 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, later extended to November 19.
“These disruptions are the result of a deficient preparatory process that conditioned the start of the operation from the outset,” the politician said today at a press conference on 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 concerned, 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 strangling this process.
“The recruitment process for census agents did not follow any transparency criteria and the subsequent training of agents was incomplete and basically did not include training for the use of tablets,” he declared.
“This obviously extended the interview time and made it difficult to cover the area allocated to each agent in the established time,” he noted, highlighting that all “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” today that the 2024 Census operation serves as “yet another administrative expedient for the regime to maneuver and manipulate population data for electoral purposes”.
The Angolan National Statistics Institute (INE) announced on November 19 that more than 77% of the country’s population was registered between September 19 and November 19, and that, until the second half of December, it will continue collecting data, in a recap format, due to the work yet to be completed in many urban areas.
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