StatsSA responds to fieldworkers claiming not to have received payment

Only days before Census 2022 was scheduled to end on 20 March, a group of fieldworkers said they had stopped working. The group of unhappy fieldworkers from the Fezile Dabi district, tasked to work in Parys, then said they had not been paid since February when the Census kicked off countrywide. In a telephonic conversation, they told the Gazette only some of them had re- ceived payment; their efforts to solve their remuneration issues had been fruitless. Gazette enquired at StatsSA’s head office, where spokesperson, Trevor Oosterwyk, explained that StatsSA’s official payment system makes all the payments for the more than 100,000 fieldworkers across the country.

He emphasised that fieldworkers’ personal and bank details must be correct when loaded onto the system for payment. Furthermore, their supervisors must sign off the successful completion of their workload for a specific period before a payment can be made. He confirmed that payment for February had already been made. Most fieldworkers who signed contracts in March had also been paid on Friday, 18 March. Although StatsSA is aware that some fieldworkers were still awaiting payment, he confirmed that StatsSA is busy with the payments and understands the urgency for them to receive remuneration. He assured the workers that StatsSA is doing everything possible to speed up payment.

However, it is also crucial to ensure that no fraudulent payments are made, fieldworkers complete their workload and check whether their banking and personal details were captured correctly. He said the final payments would be made once the census ends on 20 March and the fieldworkers have handed in their tablets. He invited the fieldworkers with payment problems to phone the toll-free number 0800 110 248, email trevoro@statssa.gov.za or contact him on 082 908 9104.

When speaking to the fieldworkers earlier, Gazette learnt that their biggest challenge was getting people to participate in the census; people were either too busy or simply refused. A census gathers data from everyone, unlike a survey that only collects infor- mation from selected respondents. A census is, therefore, the only source of community-level data on issues like migration patterns, education, persons with disabilities, employment and unemployment, fertility, mortality and service delivery, all of which are critical for planning. Legally, Section 16 of the Statistics Act (Act 6 of 1999) obliges a respondent to answer all the questions an officer of Statistics South Africa puts to them.

Section 17 of the act guarantees the confidentiality of your information. The data collected is used for statistical pur- poses only and no one can access data on an individual level. The census was supposed to have been done in 2021 but was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Census was originally planned to end on 28 February but StatsSA, in conjunction with the Stats Council, then extended Census 2022 enumeration (personal and telephone interviewing) till 20 March 2022.

Oosterwyk said StatsSA’s had not met its goal for data collection by Friday 18 March. The final phase of Census 2022 still has to be wrapped up after the 20 March deadline, Oosterwyk said, collecting data from rural and far-off places that were difficult to reach. But the real question is how effective the census was, once completed.