Blantyre District Council has recruited 130 temporary enumerators to collect data of all the households in the district for the Unified Beneficiary Registry (UBR).

Blantyre District Council Principal Social Welfare Officer, Kumbukeni Kauwa, disclosed this in Thyolo on Tuesday during training of trainers for District Training Team and District Social Support Committee.

Kauwa said the enumerators are expected to conduct the exercise for a period of 30 to 42 days targeting household members, regardless of status, in the areas of eight Traditional Authorities in Blantyre.

“This exercise is very crucial because it will provide the district with consolidated information on the socio-economic status of households which will help in determining the potential eligibility for social programmes such as Social Cash Transfer and Climate Smart Public Works, among others,” he said.

Ministry of Gender, Community Development and Social Welfare Chief Social Welfare Officer, Anastazio Matewere, said currently apart from Blantyre, three other districts of Lilongwe, Rumphi and Kasungu are also conducting a similar exercise.

He urged the enumerators to exercise professionalism and integrity to achieve the desired results.

“Enumerators should be patriotic enough to collect data that will represent the real situation of the households being interviewed. In the end, we want those who deserve to be in an allocated programme, thereby reducing inclusion and exclusion errors that occur when selecting households for different programmes,” he said.

One of the enumerators’ supervisors, Nozghechi Hara, thanked Blantyre District Council for organising the training to orient them on their roles in the management of data collection.

She said they will ensure that every household has been registered during the period and that information collected is accurate.

In an interview, one of the enumerators, Chilungamo Missi, pledged to collect quality data and make timely submission of it.