19 Mar : Additional Chief Secretary and Development Commissioner, Alemtemshi had convened an emergency meeting of administrative heads and heads of departments in the Secretariat Conference Hall in Kohima on Wednesday, the 18th March 2008 to deliberate on the State’s statistical data book ‘The Statistical Handbook of Nagaland’ where number of anomalies have been noticed and required immediate correction.
Presiding over the meeting, Alemtemshi regretted that the statistical information contained in the Handbook which is the indicator of socio-economic features of the state was not done as it should have been, as there appeared to be wrong figures. He said such wrong statistics reflects adversely in the planning process of the state. ‘A very serious anomaly of crisis proportion is now noticed in the state’s statistical data. Since planning process is based on statistical data including the Gross Domestic Products (GDP) in the state and there is an urgent need to review this’ Alemtemshi said.
Presenting number of wrong statistical information in the Handbook through power point presentation, Additional Chief Secretary lamented that many departments have not given due importance to the collection and compilation of statistical information besides statistical officers and field staff seems to have failed to do justice to the job. He said top priority should be accorded in collection of statistical information by all departments.
After a two-hour discussion, the meeting decided to make sincere efforts to update the Handbook in the next issue of 2008. The meeting also decided to hold another meeting on 20th April at 1 P.M to give a concrete shape to the proposed massive exercise of data collection.
During the meeting some senior officers suggested that proper training be given to statistical officers and field staff, saying many of them are not trained.