Director of Planning and Development for Lilongwe District Council, Willard Chirwa, has urged enumerators in the district to collect accurate data for the Unified Beneficiary Registry (UBR).

Chirwa was speaking Tuesday during a five-day Training of Trainers for the district training team and Social Support Committee in Lilongwe.

“Sometimes people in rural areas lose their opportunity because of incorrect information collected during such exercises. Let us be serious and collect the needed information,” he said.

Chirwa said UBR information is very important because it provides the district with consolidated information on the social-economic status of households, which will assist in determining people’s opportunity of being in different programmes such as Social Cash Transfer and Climate Smart Public Works Programme.

Lilongwe District Council Principal Social Welfare Officer, Sarah Chimodzi, said her office is expecting enumerators to do their work professionally in order to achieve the desired results.

“We are expecting enumerators to give us correct data that will represent the real status of households on the ground so that those who deserve to be in certain programmes should be in such programmes,” she said

Principal Economist in the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, John Funny Mwale, thanked Lilongwe District Council for recruiting UBR enumerators saying the exercise is crucial in knowing the social economic status of people in the district.

In a separate interview one of the supervisors, Mayamiko Namaleu, said she will make sure that her team of enumerators collect accurate data and submit it in on time.

Lilongwe District Council has recruited 460 enumerators who are expected to reach out to 392,733 households.

The enumerators are expected to conduct the exercise for a period of 30 to 42 days in all 23 traditional authorities in the district.

Similar exercise will also be conducted in Blantyre, Kasungu, and Rumphi.