By Samuel Ansumana
During a meeting held on the 25th February 2020 at the NaCSA headquarters on Charlotte Street in Freetown, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between Statistics SL which is the implementing partner and the National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA) for the establishment of the Social Protection Registry for Integrated National Targeting, Associated Access and Impact Evaluation of the Social Safety Net (SPRINT).
The MOU will serve to identify, prioritize and select households living in poverty and vulnerable conditions so as to help Government to take effective actions that will reduce the structural factors affecting poverty and social exclusion in those communities.
In his statement at signing of the MOU, the Commissioner of NaCSA, Abu Bockarie Kokofele stated that it is an historic day as lots of hard work have gone into putting together the MOU that establishes what Stats SL’s role as implementing partner will be and that of NaCSA as contracting agency.
He furthered that Stats SL will specifically implement the Social Protection Registry for Integrated National Targeting (SPRINT) which has 3 stages. Stage 1, he says, will be geographical targeting which will be a transparent criteria for the selection of regions, districts, chiefdoms, wards, localities, or other relevant geographical units and corresponding resource allocation mechanism.
Stage 2 will be community identification of potentially eligible beneficiaries and the final stage will be verification by Proxy Means Testing (PMT) or a variation thereof.
He therefore urged the implementing partner to give it their all to get the work done stating that he very much values and holds into high esteem, the professionalism that Stats SL has.
The Statistician General and CEO of Stats SL, Prof Osman Sankoh (Mallam O), said that they at Stats SL feel privileged to be implementing partners for the establishment of the Social Protection Register.
He intimated all present that Stats SL certainly has the requisite expertise to do the job and explained that Stage 1 and 2 of the targeting process require existing statistical data to produce poverty maps of the country via the recent Sierra Leone Integrated Household Survey data at the lowest geographical level available i.e. locality or enumeration area, including geographical data to locate potential beneficiary communities via locality names, GPS coordinates and shape files, whiles Stage 3 of the targeting process involves use of a pre-defined questionnaire to collect data from the potential beneficiary households.
The questionnaire collects information that is statistically highly correlated with poverty i.e. household demographics, housing conditions, and assets, and other identifying information like a unique identifier.
He concluded by saying that Stats SL will therefore be responsible for collecting and processing Proxy Means Testing data from all potential beneficiary households using computer assisted personal interview which is data collection via the use of tablets
The signing of the bilateral MOU by the Commissioner of NaCSA, Abu Bockarie Kokofele and the Statistician General Of Stats SL, Prof Osman Sankoh climaxed the meeting.
