The statistical service has aborted, at the last hour, a planned announcement of preliminary figures generated from the recently held Population and Housing Census. It took nearly two hours after the scheduled time for the Service officials to announce it is unable to provide the information they had on their own volition, promised to give out. The delay and the subsequent ‘no show’ angered many journalists, more so when no official explanation was provided. “It is very frustrating for somebody to come all the way from his house to come and sit here for two hours only for you to come and tell us the thing did not come on; as to how the thing did not come you didn’t tell us anything. “…We are not serious as a country,” one of the angry journalists said. “It was a bit disappointing and quite annoying. You invite us to leave our offices, not to mention the time we spent here. We wasted fuel and resources to come and sit here for about an hour only for someone to come and tell us for technical reasons they cannot announce it. This definitely cannot wash,” another poured out. The ‘no show’ comes at a time when the Statistical Service has come under heavy criticism for a near chaotic census programme in which some Ghanaians claim they have not been enumerated. Some enumerators are also grumbling over unpaid allowances. But Joy News’ Elvis Adjetey got some answers from the Head of Recruitment and Training at the Ghana Statistical Service Francis Yankey who explained: “The figures were not announced because we were expecting some information from a few of our districts. Unfortunately by 2:00 pm we had still not gotten those information.” He was hopeful the Service will release the figures on Friday. Story by Nathan Gadugah/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana