Mr Eric Gregory Kwatia, Chairman of the Finance and Accounts Committee at the Ashaiman Municipal Assembly, at the weekend said the government recognised the importance of data in the development agenda for accelerated national growth.

Mr Kwatia, who is also a Government Appointee to the Assembly, said at the launch of the 2021 Population and Housing Census 30 Days activism to the census night at Ashaiman that some initiatives were taken by the government over the years to promote growth.

He emphasized the importance of statistics in socio-economic development, which is a major challenge facing civil society's organizations, businesses and government planning; monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes are concerned, lack of reliable and timely data.

He said the 2021 census would provide a huge amount and variety of data to support both national and global development process as information would be collected on every structure and their uses, water and sanitation resources, households and individuals.

The census would enable the region and districts to obtain important data to support key decisions, including data on the proportion of the urban, population living in slums, informal settlement or poor housing conditions and the data would help attract new businesses to the regions, districts and localities.

Mr Kwatia said the District Coordinating Council would ensure the necessary security measures to protect enumerators, census officials and citizens to ensure smooth conduct in the district, and build the needed systems, pool together diverse expertise, mobilize resource, and support strategies to conduct a successful census.

According to him, the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS), the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP), the Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda (GSGDA) and an Agenda for Jobs; Creating Prosperity and Equal Opportunity for all due to the availability of data.

Mr Kwatia said the Assembly had undertaken human-centred initiatives with emphasis on social welfare, poverty, hunger, inequality in various forms, child labour, among others.