KwaZulu-Natal Acting Premier Senzo Mchunu and Statistician General Pali Lehohla have launched the KwaZulu-Natal Research Forum in Durban today. The launch was attended by mayors, traditional leaders, academics and senior government officials from all spheres of government.
“We are excited as the provincial government that once again we are hosting the Statistician General Pali Lehohla and his team. You’d recall that on the 6th November 2012, the Statistician General handed over to the members of the provincial cabinet the Census 2011 provincial and municipal results.”
“I wish to point to out to SG that the Census 2011 Report has been very helpful in terms of assisting Cabinet in planning the execution of all government programmes of service delivery as we wrap up this term of office of this government.”
“Interestingly, towards the end of last year the provincial government hosted the Conference of African Ministers responsible for Civil Registration and Vital Statistics on behalf of the people of Africa.”
“More than 42 African Ministers, researchers, academics and non-governmental organisations from across the continent converged at the ICC to share ideas on how to improve civil status information for efficient public administration and generation of vital statistics for National Development and MDGs Monitoring in Africa.”
“The hosting of this conference was a clear indication of the seriousness in which governments and leaders in Africa are attaching to the issue of civil registration for public policy, good governance, human rights and more importantly for socio-economic development planning.”
“However it was noted during the conference that despite on-going efforts aimed at improving all systems of civil registration, the majority of our countries in African still lack adequate, viable and complete systems.”
“It is for these reasons that we committed ourselves as the provincial government to work with Governments in Africa to share resources and to facilitate exchange programmes with academic institutions and other strategic institutions in order to accelerate Africa’s programme on the improvement of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics.”
“Civil Registration and Vital Statistics are fundamental to anything we do as governments. We require accurate data for the execution of all government programmes of service delivery.”
“We all know that African governments, including KZN government, have an important task of ensuring improvement of services to the people, provision of water, sanitation, roads, electrification, and other infrastructure which will be part of growing the African economy to enable the creation of jobs and eradicate poverty.”
“The Key focus area going forward is to ensure that the KZN Research Forum becomes an anchor point in terms of facilitating the involvement of all stakeholders in this area of research and analysis of data for the purpose of planning and implementation of service delivery programmes.”
“We therefore expect the KZN Research Forum to strengthen our efforts that are aimed at making accurate data available in order to ensure equitable allocation of government resources to our people.”
“As government we also expect this Research Forum to assist in terms of the monitoring and evaluation of the work of government departments and the impact we are making in terms of service delivery.”
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