CAIRO: In response to mounting criticism, the National Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics said it’s open to suggestions and inquiries from researchers and journalists who wish to identify gaps in its findings.
Aliaa Abdel Hamid, chief of the agency’s public relations department, spoke in response to criticism of the agency by some researchers who say it is failing to provide statistics on vital topics.
When Daily News Egypt approached the agency regarding figures relating to Egyptians who have returned to the country after years of living abroad and acquiring foreign nationalities, it found that no such statistics were available, despite the insistence of experts that such information should be part of the agency’s emigration research.
“Even if they take for granted that we don’t have the badly needed statistics to support their research, there is no harm in inquiring or informing the agency through our staff or website about these shortcomings, said Abdel Hamid.
She said that many researchers seem to be unaware of the difficulty of compiling statistics on certain topics. There are plenty of journalists who are unprofessional when they tackle certain issues in the absence of figures to support their stories, she added.
“Some, for example, come seeking figures about a subject that can’t be easily covered in statistical terms, she said.
“Boat-dwellers, for instance, is a subject that can’t be covered statistically because they lead a nomadic life and keep moving from one place to another along the Nile. How can you track them down?
“To cite another example, some criticize us for failing to compile statistics on urfi [unregistered] marriages, she said. “How can we when those who marry that way are doing so in secret? And it is also impossible to produce breakdowns on illegitimate children living in orphanages. They get mixed up with orphans and it is difficult to retrace their origin.
Often, she said, the agency is approached by individuals seeking data on very specific areas that had not been researched because they had never come to the agency’s attention.
She said that much of the energy of the agency went into ensuring that figures provided by various government offices were not conflicting.
“Officially we offer breakdowns on regulars like inflation and growth rates as well as demographic statistics and others relating, for example, to common issues like emigration, births and deaths, she said.
Coordination with other ministries and government bodies is essential in certain researches and studies.
“For example, we can’t give any figures relating to Egyptian manpower abroad or local labor without referring to the Ministry of Labor. Figures should be the same at the agency as they are at the ministries or any other organizations in question.
But Abdel Hamid blamed many, including journalists, for citing statistics that might have not been released by the agency.
“In his article on spinsters, a well-known journalist cited us with regard to figures relating to old maids, a subject that we couldn’t approach as many still differ on the age a woman should reach to be considered a spinster.
“What happened is that he mixed the number of unmarried women with that of old maids and came up with a faulty figure.
Pressing the point further, she said some researchers and journalists take shortcuts by downloading figures from the internet and attributing them to the agency to lend them credibility.
“This is unprofessional. It’s always good to have statistics, an essential cornerstone in decision-making, but let’s cooperate so that they can exist on a sound basis, she said.
