The Heads of Units within the National Statistics Office, NSO, had a short meeting with the Finance and Treasury Minister Manasseh Sogavare on Friday 17th January 2025 at the finance headquarter.
The meeting with the Finance Minister came as the NSO office concluded their week to lead the devotion at the headquarter.
Every week each division within the Finance Ministry would lead the daily devotion from 8:am to 8:30 am before the day’s work begin.
NSO was the second division this year to lead the morning devotion as they faithfully arrived early at the office before going together to the headquarter as a group.
Each day an officer was delegated to lead the prayer or share the message.
Every Friday was reserved for the Permanent Secretary (PS) or the Minister to share the message and on Friday Minister Sogavare shared the message.
His message was about how much a human being is worth. It was more of a teaching as he inspired the listeners about the different elements like copper and iodine that are present inside the human body and how much percentage they contain.
They were actually worth very little in terms of monetary value.
In fact, Mr Sogavare said “A human being is worth just $1 USD.
“But to God, humans are very important, so much so that he sent his own son to die for them on the Cross”.
He quoted Psalms 8 verses 1-4, stressing the fourth verse which says “’What is man that You visit him every morning?”
During the devotion he announced that he was celebrating his 70th birthday and later everyone sang “happy birthday” for him.
After the prayer and a light refreshment, the NSO Heads and representatives of the units met with the Minister.
They took the time to congratulate him for reaching a milestone event in his life, acknowledging him as one of the country’s longest serving national leaders.
The discussion began with each of the heads and representatives introducing themselves to Mr Sogavare.
They represened the Economics, Social, Census and Survey, the Consumer Price Index and the National Statistics Development Strategies, NSDS Unit.
After that, the acting Government Statistician Samson Kanamoli briefed the Finance Minister on the current projects the NSO is working on which include the Building Capacity in Statistics and Audit, CAPSA project, the Household Income and Expenditure Survey, HIES, 2024-2025, and future surveys which consist of the Demographic Health Survey, the National Indicator Survey, the National Agriculture Survey and the Village Resource Survey.
Mr Kanamoli said the NSO is planning to restructure the office this year.
The overall vision he said, is for the NSO to produce more statistics that Government Ministries can use to plan and create policies.
This would mean employing more staff and more advisors within the different units to carry the workload.
In response, Minister Sogavare reaffirmed the essential role statistics plays at the national level in making informed decisions.
He was supportive and expressed a disposition to push them forward.
The discussions concluded on a high note.
- SINSO
