Namibia - Parliamentarians came out in support of the Statistics Bill during its second reading in the National Assembly on Tuesday. The Bill is to replace the 1976 Statistics Act, which has been amended several times in South Africa. The Minister of Presidential Affairs, Dr Albert Kawana, said the current legislation is obsolete and insufficient to monitor the implementation of major national development policies and frameworks. "Statistics in a democratic society such as ours are increasingly a governance issue," said the Swapo Party chief whip, Professor Peter Katjavivi.

The proposed new legislation is to address bureaucratic bottlenecks within the decentralised national statistics system.

Katjavivi said monitoring and evaluation of Government's programmes have not been effective due to the lack of reliable statistics.

The bill proposes an independent statistics body outside the public service to take over the statistics function.

This body, the Namibia Statistics Agency, will be headed by a Statistician General appointed by the board of the agency.

The director general of the National Planning Commission (NPC) will be the political head, with a tripartite functional balance between the NPC, the agency and its board.

Katjavivi said while an autonomous body is a welcome move, it comes with greater responsibility and accountability.

One is that such a body would be expected to produce more reliable and trustworthy statistics because it will be less susceptible to outside influence.

Another is that an independence assists the agency to deal with human resource constraints under which most developing countries operate.

"If qualified statisticians are in shorter supply than 'normal' civil servants, then statistical authorities need more flexibility than mainstream government departments to recruit and retain their staff and to allocate their human resources effectively," said Katjavivi.

During parliamentary discussions on the Bill, All People's Party (APP) president Ignatius Shixwameni, suggested that recruitment for the agency should not be subject to party affiliation, tribe or ethnic, or regional considerations.

"Recruit the best professionals for the agency," stressed Shixwameni, and called upon Government, particularly the Governing Council of State-Owned Enterprises and agencies to standardise and harmonise all Acts governing SOEs to be compliant with the standards and principles of the Kings Report on good governance.

He also proposed monthly labour surveys to keep track of the employment situation in the country.

"I am sure that if it was done in the past, we would not end up today with the current situation where we have a 50 per cent plus unemployment," said Shixwameni.

Provision is further made for a national spacial data infrastructure and a committee for spatial data, which plays an increasing role in the response of Government and other agencies to disasters and national emergencies.

Katjavivi said a national statistical plan must be developed as a coordinating tool for the national system.

Catherine Sasman

The Namibian/10/03/2011