After the Ghana Statistical Service failed on Monday to announce the preliminary figures generated from the recently held Population and Housing Census, one of its officials has denied speculations that the aborted announcement was because GSS did not have the full complement of results from across the country, insisting that technical problems were to blame. Speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show, David Kombat, head of Field and Publicity activities at the Census Secretariat said that the secretariat has the full complement of the results and was ready to publish it until a last minute hitch in their computer room compelled them to cancel the announcement. He said “technically, you can have a new car and you try to spark it and it doesn’t spark. That is what happened to us yesterday”. According to David Kombat, although the Head of Trading at the Census Secretariat had explained that the failure to announce the results was because GSS had not received all the figures from the Census yet, that could not be a factual statement because all the enumerators who were collating the figures from the various regions of Ghana have submitted their results to the GSS. He explained that the Census enumerators summarize all the figures got from the various districts of Ghana on a form called the PAC3 which the GSS uses as provisional results, and that all such forms have been received by the GSS. David Kombat said that the Ghana Statistical Service is under no pressure to release the Census results although it is fully aware that the results are essential to planning development.He said that the results will be announced either on Friday this week, or early next week. The 2010 National Census was bedeviled with problems of non-cooperation by some communities, insufficient logistics and dissertation of post by some enumerators and was heavily criticized for poor planning by the Ghanaian public. However in David Kombat's view, the challenges will not discredit the final results, adding that independent demographic experts in the country can cross-check the findings for their veracity after they are released. Responding to claims of non-payment of remunerations to some enumerators in the exercise, Mr. Kombat said that enumerators will be paid upon the completion of work assigned them. Story by Sedem Ofori/SMS