Arghea Desafti Hapsari, Jakarta – House legislators and population experts are questioning the accuracy of the nation's recent head count, agreeing that the BPS failed to clear implementation and training hurdles during the 2010 census.
Many obstacles hindered the implementation of the country's largest census to date.
Workers reportedly had difficulties when surveying residents of Jakarta's high-rise apartments and indigenous people living deep in the hinterlands in places such as Papua.
BPS head Rusman Heriawan also said some census workers might have also been negligent in their work.
The difficulties prompted the BPS to extend the census' deadline twice: first from the original May 31 completion date to June 15, and then to June 30.
A member of the House of Representatives' Commission II overseeing domestic affairs, Budiman Sudjatmiko, told The Jakarta Post over the weekend that he doubted that the census was accurate.
"I don't believe it's 100 percent. There is always room for human error in the survey. The census takers and the people who were surveyed could have had different perceptions of the questions asked and therefore the data may not be valid," he said.
University of Indonesia Demographic Institute director Sonny Harry B. Harmadi said the BPS' national population estimate of 237.6 million might be right – but he was concerned that other parts of the census were inaccurate.
He said the BPS' biggest challenge had been managing 700,000 census workers.
"There were census takers who didn't understand the questions or what kind of data was asked for by the census. There were also those who did not do their work, made assumptions and used them to fill out the census forms," he added.
He said he questioned the effectiveness of the BPS' training for census workers.
"When they needed to query people on, for example, maternal related deaths, did they stop after asking if a female member of a family had died during a time when she was pregnant or went into labor? The women could have died because of a motorcycle accident and that would not count as a maternal-related death. Was the training good enough so participants could have understood those kinds of things?"
Multiple errors could have happened, he said. "The census workers could have not done their jobs, or maybe they did but made mistakes in understanding the questions asked. And there is always the chance that mistakes were made during data entry," he added.
Budiman, a legislator from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said there was a lack of efforts to raise awareness on the census' importance.
"Statistics can only be objective if everyone who is surveyed understands that the results will benefit them," he told the Post.
Sonny said the BPS should have cooperated with NGOs and other civil society groups. "The BPS should have a wider network. NGOs can help in making questionnaires and in monitoring the census," he added.