NATIONAL PLANNING COMMISSION: Deputy Speaker, I thank Adv Swart for the question. It relates to whether we experienced any serious challenges during the census. Perhaps the most serious challenge that confronted me was the colour of the Statistician- General's suit, which, thankfully, he has now been relieved of. [Laughter.]
You know, it was an interesting challenge. Many of the issues we anticipated and they related to the fact that so many South Africans live in gated environments, and getting into those was difficult in the beginning, but I think a large part of it was overcome. Also, the strategy of Stats SA was to try and recruit enumerators for the areas from which they come, and this did work in large measure, but in more affluent areas there was a battle to try and find people from those areas to work there, so people had to be brought in from outside.
There was concern, and I'm sure the hon Swart was one of the people who raised concern about the sense of criminality in society and whether this would impact on the census. Now, fairly early in the process in one of the suburbs of Johannesburg there was an incident, but looking at the events over the entirety of October, in fact, there were more enumerators at risk of crime, for example a number of attempted rapes and muggings, and so on.
Also, in terms of challenges, towards the end of the process a rather unfortunate event occurred in Durban in which a newspaper had reported that enumerators in KwaZulu-Natal were being paid less than their counterparts elsewhere, so enumerators went on strike and it cost a huge effort to get in there and try to quell the strike on the one hand, but also some supervisors were trying to hold completed questionnaires back. That was resolved and just last week there were events in a place called Silvertown in the Eastern Cape - Kwazekhele - where some 20 000 people were refusing to be enumerated, but I'm sure that the hon Swart would have seen that the Statistician-General himself went in there with a team and persuaded people that it made every bit of sense for them to be enumerated so that we could understand exactly what their circumstances were.
But on balance I think that the census proceeded as planned. The challenges, in the main, were anticipated, and now it's a mopping-up operation and some issues will become clear in the course of the next three weeks or so as they undertake reverse logistics.
Chairperson, hon Minister, whilst the ACDP appreciates that it's still early days as far as judging the outcome of Census 2011 is concerned, it does appear to have been largely a successful operation. The critical question, obviously, is the degree of undercounting, and that we will only later ascertain. But one of your concerns expressed to this House was that people would not voluntarily participate in the count.
To what degree do you think that Stats SA and we as public representatives were successful in allaying concerns that the information collected would be kept confidential and that the census, apart from being a statutory obligation, as you pointed out, is in the interests of those being counted?
Lastly, hon Minister, we understand that eight census staff members tragically lost their lives during the census and we as the ACDP express our condolences to the families and friends of those deceased. Do you think that more could have been done to ensure the safety of enumerators, given those lives, the 10 staff members that were assaulted, the 15 robberies and seven cases of intimidation? Thank you, Chairperson.
NATIONAL PLANNING COMMISSION: Chairperson, firstly, I omitted to do this, but let me express appreciation to colleagues in the House who had greatly assisted, because I think the presence of Members of Parliament had greatly allayed the fears and concerns that people might otherwise have had.
In respect to the safety of staff, these were road accidents, and I think it's just a manifestation of some of the difficulties we do encounter in these circumstances. I want to say that there's an implicit risk in employing 130 000 people who had no interest in remaining in the process, so the safety of assets is always a difficulty in these challenges. There were also some other instances that we became aware of, such as one in Tokai here in Cape Town in which, when the enumerator arrived at the house people tried to open the gate and the gate fell over and actually killed a child.
These kinds of things are very, very terrible, but I think what's important is that the Statistician-General got around to all of these areas, spoke to families and was a great comfort in the circumstances.
In respect of refusals, as of last week we knew that 22 000 households had refused. Now people would have seen again a top-level team of Stats SA going out, waving letters, threatening to arrest people and so on, but there were 22 000 households. At one level it's a very high number, but in the grander scheme of things it's 0,15% from whom there were just absolute refusals and nothing could be done to persuade people otherwise.
I don't know, but we did encounter in some areas that in households in which there were people on the margins - non-South African citizens who were afraid of being found out - there was just a blank refusal and I know that in some instances the Statistician-General invited the local police to go to houses and people were persuaded to behave differently. I think that relative, both to 1996 and 2001 - the hon Swart is correct, of course it's early days yet - when we look at the number of houses counted, and evaluate the number of refusals and the number of call-backs that enumerators had to make, we've actually done exceedingly well this year. Thank you.
Chairperson, thank you, Minister, for your response. I think we have to agree in this House that by and large the process went off very well, but we'll have to wait and see. Mr Minister, you did indicate that there were some troubles that started in Durban, and I don't know why they start in Durban, but I do hope they end there and remain there. Yesterday I was listening to the news that there were some of these enumerators who have not been paid and they were to be paid by yesterday, Tuesday. I wonder if the Minister has any information on that.
The second thing is that it didn't look well when we saw young people standing on highways hitching lifts, trying to get into taxis and private vehicles. Now I know we need to create employment, but I wonder - you know, hindsight is the best sight - if it is something that Statistics SA and you could address in future so that proper arrangements could be made for these young people to be able to haul these bags and carry these forms which contain confidential information so that they can carry out their work properly.
NATIONAL PLANNING COMMISSION: Chairperson, thanks hon Singh. I think it was on Thursday last week that 95 000 enumerators were paid. It was an exceedingly smooth operation. The field staff supervisors and coordinators will be paid later, but that's by contractual arrangement.
The people who have not yet received payment - I think there's about 13 000 to 14 000 who should've been paid, but weren't - in the main were not paid because of bank account difficulties. The agreement throughout was that individuals needed to have a bank account and that the money would be transferred. Now you can't come along and say we should pay it into a friend's bank account. This has been the kind of problem that we've encountered, because so many of the enumerators are normally unemployed. Some of them are in debt and were afraid that as soon as the money was transferred into their account somebody would actually put a lien on that money. It's been that kind of problem. In discussion with the Statistician- General yesterday we talked through these issues and I'm pretty sure that they will all be resolved.
In respect of the staff battling with transport, there were just over 6 200 motor vehicles hired and the endeavour was to try and get by with them. I know that from time to time - I saw it in the area where I live as well - you'd see this large number of people sitting around there, and I know that the hon George had drawn to my attention the fact that in one area people had seen or believed that they'd seen enumerators with erasers changing data and so on. We went into that and it was proven to be incorrect, but thanks to the hon George and his constituent through whom the matter was drawn to our attention and we could follow up on that.
But it has been a rather difficult process. The key issue has been the quality of the supervision in the area, and given the vast number of people, there are sometimes glitches in training and so on. Thanks.
Chairperson, the hon Minister has answered part of my question, which was about enumerators who were seen - and I saw one myself - next to the road, using an eraser. My question was whether using a pencil is preferred to using a ballpoint, and why, and does that not compromise the reliability of the results when erasers were used? Thank you.
NATIONAL PLANNING COMMISSION: Chairperson, thanks, Rev Meshoe. Let me explain what happens from here: At this stage the census questionnaires - about 14 and a bit million of them - are in boxes in containers in most areas properly accounted for. They would've been scanned on zip-zip machines and had the data transferred from the bar codes to a central point.
The forms themselves now need to be transferred, and you can only deal with this if you scan the forms. One of the battles that we had in Census 2001 was that the light in the scanner didn't register the markings made by ballpoints. So, having invested in software, we had to go through the entire route again and according to the people involved in the process nothing registers on a questionnaire like a lead pencil, and it's for this reason it was used.
Of course there are risks in the process, but there are risks with everything we do and I think we'll only be able to see that, because, amongst other things, what happens now is that there's what is called a post-enumeration survey and a number of areas are chosen throughout the country randomly. Houses are revisited and then there's a comparison by household and then we'll be able to see.
Perhaps, in some of the areas where there have been reports - I think the one report that we got was from Kempton Park - we would go back and be able to establish and verify whether the fears were grounded or not. Thanks.
Chairperson, the Minister has mentioned the letter that I referred to his office from a member of the public, which was subsequently sent to the Statistician-General for response. The member of the public had said that the Census 2011 was a farce and showed photographs of, apparently, changes being made on the pencilled documentation. Now the Statistician-General said that:
When a correction has been demanded the boxes that have been checked incorrectly then have to be corrected, including through erasing of wrongly filled questions and questions that are not applicable.
So the Statistician-General did actually say that they did make changes to the forms. The complainant then responded that they shouldn't be tampered with in any way and the Statistician-General then gave further reasons why it was necessary sometimes to amend the data.
So, given that the credibility of the census has been questioned in this way, what steps will you be taking to restore and ensure public confidence in the validity of the data collected? Thank you.
NATIONAL PLANNING COMMISSION: Chair, I would have to be untrue to myself and to this House, were I to vouch for the process across the entire country involving the numbers of people that we have. In the main I think that there's a very solid message and I think the hon Adv Swart referred to the fact that there's a very high sense of confidence about the census that has been conducted. Would you be able to satisfy everybody in the country? Difficult!
But as I indicated in response to the earlier question by Rev Meshoe, I think, given the letter that your constituent wrote, we know that there's a risk in some of the areas, and apart from the normal randomised enumerator areas selected for the post-enumeration survey, that would be one of the areas canvassed specifically to be able to check and verify whether there was any strange behaviour on the part of poorly trained enumerators. It's the only thing you can do in a situation like this.
The big, big battle has been to get up to as many houses as we possibly could. We set a very high benchmark for the census to attain in terms of the undercount. We want a single-digit number - you'll know we had double digits both in 1996 and 2001 - and I think that in terms of houses visited, we are now looking at a single-digit number, but the devil is in the detail and that's what we'll have to watch as we proceed.
Let me also just say that once the questionnaires arrive at the processing centre to the west of Pretoria and the scanning is done, long before it gets to me as the Minister responsible so that I can hand it over to the President, the Stats Council, with a number of actuaries and others, would oversee the process, and the seal of solidity of the process undertaken would actually come from the council, and that is a safety valve. It's therein that we have a guarantee of quality late in the process. Thank you.
Position adopted by National Planning Commission regarding nationalisation 269. The Leader of the Opposition (DA) asked the Minister in the Presidency: National Planning Commission:
(1) Whether the National Planning Commission (NPC) has been investigating the viability of nationalisation; if not, why not; if so, what progress has been made with the investigation;
(2) whether the NPC has taken an official position on the calls for nationalisation; if not, what is the position in this regard; if so, what are the relevant details?