SOUTHERN PROVINCE HUYE — As districts embark on a planned development drive, there is need for proper statistics to back up the planning, the director general of the NISR said.Speaking during a function celebrating African statistics week, Dr. Louis Munyakazi said that, given the importance of proper statistics for planners at the lower levels, the institute would provide specialists to help fill the void.“We are going to provide a computer to every district specifically to handle statistics-related issues. In it will be installed a special programme dubbed ‘Imihigo’ to help in the processing of data on performance contracts,” said Munyakazi.“We shall provide another computer to help district officials in recording vital information like the numbers of people who are born, the dead, and the officially married, because such data is vital for planning,” he said.The National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda was founded in 2005, mainly to gather much-needed statistics in different sectors of the economy to ensure proper planning. However, Dr. Munyakazi decried the lack of enthusiasm on the part of Rwandans in local administration to use results from different research conducted by the institute.“Results from our researches are mainly used by international organisations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. We want to see a big number of Rwandans visiting our offices and website looking for information.”This years celebrations in Rwanda were held under the theme; “If you don’t count, you don’t count.”During the function, officials from different districts requested the NISR to provide data at the district and sector levels, as well as for provinces, as was the case in the 2005 survey.Such data does not help planning at the lower levels, they argued.Boudouin Ruterena, an official of the NISR said that the 2005 data was compiled before the present local administrative structures were put in place. He said that the new base line survey conducted in 2007 would reflect these levels.As is the case in Kigali City and in Eastern Province, a centre for collecting and analysing data would be set up in Huye district. It will be a reference point for all vital data on the province. Equipment at this centre will be provided by the NISR.Officiating the closing ceremony, Governor Fidele Ndayisaba urged local leaders to embrace the culture of using well-researched figures in planning activities. He echoed the institute’s slogan ‘If you don’t count, you don’t count.’ Ends
