Posters picturing census takers in the area they will work in, have still not been put up in some areas and a last group of counters is still waiting to be deployed, said Statistics SA on Monday.
“We have been experiencing some delays … I guess this happens when you’re trying to get 120 000 people to start something at the same time,” said statistician general Pali Lehohla.
“If there is an area with no posters up, then you know that no work has started there,” he said.
In line with the “Know your Enumerator” campaign, Stats SA earlier promised to put up 2.8-million posters with the faces of the census-takers.
This was to familiarise the residents with the person who would be coming to their homes to conduct the census.
Lehohla could not give figures as to how many posters were up by Monday.
“There are areas especially in Gauteng, like Parktown, where there are no posters up yet.”
He said a group of 16 000 field-workers had to be added to the 120 000 after the agency realised there were more people to be counted than initially thought.
“Of those 16 000, 8 000 were for Gauteng. We realised that we would need more field workers in the province as there was more ground to cover.”
He said some of the census-takers could not start working on Monday as they were still getting their ID cards, and still had to get their pictures taken for the posters.
Some field-workers were finalising their contracts and waiting to be allocated to their areas of work, said Lehohla.
It could take up to two days to have all the posters up and have everything running, he said.
Lehohla said there was no need to worry as there was a two-week mop-up period after October 31.
Census 2011 started on Monday and will run until October 31.
The results are expected in November next year.
For more information visit the Census 2011 website.