EASTERN PROVINCE

NYAGATARE — Officials of the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR) have asked district leaders to collect data on property owned by residents.

The information is needed in order to assess the impact of government poverty eradication strategies.

The officialswere meeting Nyagatare district leaders at Blue Sky Hotel to brief them on the ways of collecting reliable data.

"To fulfill the targets of green revolution, EDPRS, Vision 2020 and other economic development goals, we have to know the amount of property owned by our citizens so as to understand the current stand and what is needed to accomplish our targets," Dr. Louis Munyakazi, the director general of NISR said.

He encouraged the district leaders to carry out comprehensive surveys on the properties owned by area residents and submit reliable data to NISR. He however, cautioned the leaders against concocting statistics based on mere estimates.

He observed that original figures compiled from villages (Imidugudu), Cells, Sectors and Districts were not genuine because there were no qualified people to collect the data. And the data collectors depended on guess work.

"As our country is rapidly moving towards a technology and information driven society, it is imperative that we build a strong data-base infrastructure that provides accurate and timely statistics in all areas of our development," said Munyakazi.

Munyakazi also said NISR is planning to train district mayors, their deputies, Sector executive secretaries, district statisticians and agronomists in every district to build their capacity of extracting genuine data from residents.

Among other things, the trainees will explain the advantages of collecting data from communities and advise residents to give genuine information on properties they own. The leaders will be trained in data collection methods, data storage and data analysis using different methods.

The exercise will be carried out in only 336 households in every district. The official said that the households will be picked at random in every district.

As part of the exercise, he said, they started survey on agricultural activities in other districts, where they measure the hectares where food is grown, tonnes harvested, the number of crop fields and milk production among livestock farmers.

Munyakazi said they gave the participating households the measurements to determine their harvests every season and record whether their outputs are increasing or decreasing. And milk cans were also given out to milk producers to this effect.

The process started in September 2007 and it will end in August 2008. He said that they have so far covered 15 of the 30 districts.

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