The green-bibbed Census field workers will potentially be in your suburb’s street until April 14 at least.

Every ten years, StatsSA embarks on a project to collect data on the South African population in an attempt to measure how the fortunes of the citizens have swayed. Armed with a smart tablet, the field workers have been surveying the willing and despite several challenges, are entering the final stages of the process.

Also read: Census 2022: How to check if a Stats SA field worker is legit

According to StatsSA spokesperson, Trevor Oosterwyk, the Census is broken into three phases. The preparation phase includes the recruiting and training of field workers; the main phase is the core function of collecting the data from citizens; and the mop-up phase is identifying which areas have had a low counting rate and focusing field workers’ attention accordingly.

Now entering phase three, the mop-up phase is expected to be concluded by mid-April but Oosterwyk revealed that at least five million households have yet to be counted. He elaborated that there had been several challenges hampering filed workers’ efforts.

Covid has made people more apprehensive to letting people in their homes, while transporting field workers has been a challenge,” he said.

Additionally, StatsSA had set out to recruit at least 130 000 field workers but fell short as they only managed to get just under 100 000 counters into the South African streets. Problems were also encountered in paying the field workers, with many downing tools in protest. This is the first time the Census has been completed digitally, and Oosterwyk stressed that the temporary administrative systems did not always cooperate as expected.

Speaking to field workers in neighboring Roodepoort on the West Rand, they stated how load-shedding was another problem that caused many hours of downtime. Overall apathy has been high with several residents declining to be counted, a decision that was recorded accordingly. The StatsSA spokesperson added that gated communities and complexes have been stumbling blocks, but advised that body corporates and estate managers have been contacted to disseminate the Census information.

Online platforms to complete the census closed and Oosterwyk said the online system would be reopened.

Those who registered in February but were unable to complete the process will get new SMS alerts, while first-timers will be notified of the reopening of the online portal,” he said.

During the mop-up phase, field workers will be deployed in larger groups of ten to 15, hoping to tick the houses off their digital lists. The interview process takes roughly 45 minutes, depending on how many occupants reside there, with all South Africans urged to get counted.