Fiji Times, Thursday 25 Jan – THE Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA) leader Sitiveni Rabuka says the 2017 Population and Housing Census results were misleading and reflected a false picture of the nation. Mr Rabuka said the finding that unemployment was at an all-time low was deliberately misleading because the base for the data was different from all previous census, where non-wage or salary earners were regarded as unemployed.
Mr Rabuka said that “This, too, is misleading because it does not properly reflect the percentage of the population gainfully employed,” and state his disappointment that there was no breakdown of ethnicity in the data.
Government Statistician Epeli Waqavonovono said because of the importance of international comparability, they had always used the international standards and classifications in all their data collection exercises.“The 2017 Population and Housing Census was no different,” said Mr Waqavonovono.“On ethnicity information, we are guided by Chapter 1, Section 5 of the Fiji Constitution that states that all citizens of Fiji shall be known as Fijians.”
