VP Juldeh Jalloh Inaugurates 2017 MICS Report
Freetown: The Hon. Vice President Dr. Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh (in photo) on Wednesday 22nd August, 2018 officially inaugurated on behalf of His Excellency Rtd. Brigadier Julius Maada Bio, the 2017 Sierra Leone Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey Report at the Miatta Conference Hall, Youyi Building, Brookfields, Freetown.
Giving the launching statement on behalf of His Excellency, President Julius Maada Bio, the Hon. Vice President Dr. Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh explained that, the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) is an international household survey programme that was developed and supported by UNICEF and implemented by Statistics Sierra Leone on behalf of the Government of Sierra Leones.
MICS he said was designed to accumulate approximations of key indicators that are used to evaluate the situation of children, women and men nationwide.
Vice President Dr. Juldeh Jalloh furthered that, over the past 28 years, MICS has progressed to respond to changing data needs ranging from 28 indicators in the first round to 200 in the current sixth round and that it has turned out to be a key source of data on child protection, early childhood education and also a major source of data on child health and nutrition.
VP Juldeh Jalloh Inaugurates 2017 MICS Report
The sixth round of MICS, VP Jalloh said, is focused on providing a monitoring tool for the World Fit for Children, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and, other major international commitments, such as the UNGAS on HIV/AIDS and the Abuja Targets for Malaria.
These, he said, have been collected in the 6th round of the MICS, thus offering the largest single source of data for SDGs monitoring.
Sierra Leone, the Hon. Vice President disclosed, is the first country to have completed and launched the Sixth round of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) worldwide.
The 6th round, the VP maintained, is crucial in the area of filling data gaps for national SDGs reporting as well as developing a monitoring and evaluation system for the country’s national programme for Food Security, Job Creation, Good Governance and the 4th generation of the Poverty Reduction Strategic Paper (PRSP4) that is currently prepared.
The Hon. Vice President outlined some of the specific objectives of the MICS 6 for Sierra Leone which among them, he stated, were to provide a more current information for assessing the situation of children and women for the SGDs, provide an additional data need for preparing the country’s report on achieving the goals of World Fit for Children and the reporting requirements of other international development declarations and agenda; contribute to the development of the national statistics system, data and monitoring systems and strengthen national capacity in the design, implementation and analysis of such monitoring systems; obtain a nationally-representative view of the quality of water that people drink in their home and the quality of their drinking water source.
The Minister of Planning and Economic Development Mrs. Nabeela Tunis in her statement said the government’s “New Direction” under the leadership of His Excellency Julius Maada Bio is swiftly laying the fundamental foundation underpinning sustainable development and economic growth, through a series of transformative actions and reforms.
The MICS 6 report, she said, served as a credible baseline for measuring Sierra Leone’s progress towards the SDGs adding that credible and reliable data is a fundamental aspect of economic growth and development as data informs a result-oriented planning process.
She commended the country for being the first in the world to have successfully completed and launched the MICS 6 report. This she said is quite heartening as it is an indication that the country is poised to move in a new direction, navigating towards placing itself as a leading nation in the world’s current data revolution.
The UNICEF Acting Country Representative Rushnan Murtaza in her statement outlined some of the findings in the MICS 6 report which she said showed result of 20% in urban and 30% in rural, one in every four children under 5 is stunted. At Primary School, she said the reports captured that there are more girls than boys and that it balances out at the Junior Secondary school; but in the Senior Secondary School, there are more boys than girls.
She said as partners, the MICS 6 in Sierra Leone has provided them an opportunity to measure the situation of women and children against the SDGs; provide an additional data to country progress reports towards global, regional and national commitment and that most importantly the report has aided them to set the development agenda for children in the country.
The Statistician General, Mr. Osman Sankoh told the gathering that his institution Statistics Sierra Leone (Stat SL) was at the helm of the MICS 6 Report to provide statistically rigorous data on women and children.
He said his institution is responsible to produce official statistical data on various aspects of the country’s economy for better planning and policy development.
The ceremony was chaired by Mr. Moses Williams, Council Chairman of Statistics Sierra Leone.
By Alimatu Fofanah OVP Communications Unit
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