Older persons have rejected the 2024 national housing and population census results that they termed as erroneous.
Addressing journalists on Wednesday, the HelpAge Advocacy Network Uganda (HANU) chairman, Arthur Namara said whereas their figures indicate over 367,000 people above the age of 80 are receiving the Social Assistance Grant for Empowerment (SAGE) cash, the UBOS figures put the number at only 80,000.
He said these figures cant be relied on.
“At least the statistics of older persons benefitting from SAGE we have them in our permanent records. We have 367,000 people who are receiving this money but UBOS put the figure at 80,000 yet there are many more who have all these years qualified for SAGE. We think the figures by UBOS are not accurate,” Namara said.
Charles Isabirye, the chairman of the National Council for Older Persons (NCOP) suggested there could have been a mistake that led to the swapping of figures of the figures currently benefitting from SAGE and UBOS indicated 80,000 instead of 800,000.
“I think the tabulation was by mistake and they meant 800,000 older persons are benefitting from SAGE money because statistics we have show otherwise and if UBOS keeps on saying that only 80,000 benefitting from SAGE, then it means we are paying ghosts which is not the case,” Isabirye said.
“On top of that we have people who are graduating to the group of 80 years to benefit from SAGE. UBOS ought to have worked with us and other age care groups to come down to the field , possibly district by district and summarise data of older persons with evidence of their national IDs.”
Canon Jolly Babirukamu, the chairperson of Grandmothers Consortium said during the census exercise, she waited for enumerators at her home and none showed up, noting this could have been the case with many other elderly.
“I was myself not counted. I stay in a home without a gate but I waited for enumerators and none came and so I don’t know how many other grandmothers were not counted. Therefore, the UBOS report was not accurate. There are proper figures in the Ministry of Gender of how many people are getting SAGE and other support that UBOS could use,” Canon Babirukamu said.
The representatives of older persons said the problem with inaccurate figures from the census is that they might be based on by government to plan for them which might affect service delivery.
“Otherwise, if these figures are taken by the Ministry of Finance, older persons might not receive any more assistance from government since they show the number of older persons is reducing. It means we will have to wait for another 10 years for these figures to be corrected and all this time we will not be getting assistance,” the chairman of the National Council for Older Persons said.
The representatives of older persons said they are going to petition Parliament on “these erroneous” figures of the census.
