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.