Yemisi Izuora
The federal Commissioner in charge of National Population Commission, NPC, Lagos state, Barrister Bimbola Hundeyin has said dearth of infrastructure currently affecting working conditions of staff is likely going to affect easy conduct of census in the state.
Hundeyin, who raised the concern when she received members of the Senate Committee on National Population and National Identity led by its chairman Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi said the office structure itself poses health challenges to workers.
“Well today we are privileged to have the members of the senate committee on national population and National Identity, they paid us working visit as part of there oversight responsibility and function. They were in the lagos state office they had earlier on in the week been at the head quarter in Abuja and they choose to visit us in lagos.
We’ve been privileged to be with them in the last 3-4 hours they went round our facility they held meetings with us and had heart to heart discussions and we are really happy that they came and we were able to share our challenges with them and to also tell them how we are moving forward to ensure that Nigeria gets a credible Census come year 2020 “, the Commissioner said.
She said the state’s NPC is faced with critical infrastructure challenge as the office complex had been built for over 60 years and was meant for temporary and not good for use anymore and urged the committee to do all that is needed to transform the facility to ensure a credible census is conducted.
Responding, the Senate Committee chairman Suleiman Hunkuyi, said they were in Lagos to fully understand the problems the NPC is facing as well as the National Identity office.
“I have been to the headquarters of the National Population Commission and we chose to visit the lagos office which is a dual location for the data processing center, there are six of them in all and one of them is located here within this lagos office.
The intention or objective of the outing is to have a look at the office, assess thier challenges put heads together and rub minds on issues partaining to budget, allocation of resources and the application of same resources as they are being released by the ministery of finance as the case may be .
We are here and we have had the opportunity of rubbing minds with the honorable Commissioner and other tol management staff of the lagos state office and some of the directors from the national headquarters of the national population commission on the matters pertaining civil registration among other things in readiness of the lagos office to go into the next exercise of the Enumeration Area Demarcation (EAD)”.
He said the E.A.D which is one of the very important technical subject as it relates to census Nigeria country, have taken place in four local government in lagos, while another exercise is scheduled to start sometime next week.