Waitaki District Council community safety and development facilitator Helen Algar said it became clear last year official numbers for Pasifika groups living in North Otago did not match what local groups were reporting.
This spurred attempts to see if anything could be done at a local level to determine the number of Pasifika people living in the area, but unfortunately they were not successful, she said.
"We have determined that the best way forward is to work with the Pasifika and wider community to promote and support people to complete the 2018 census. This makes sense as it means we can promote the importance of completing the census to everyone’s community and as a result the next data set should be more representative," Mrs Algar said.
Accurate information was needed so community leaders could plan for the future and access funding to help the local population, she said.
Official figures showed that Oamaru’s Pasifika population stood at about 400, she said. Last year the manager of Pasifika support group Fale Pasifika O Aoraki, Ofa Boyle, suggested that figure was too low and said it might be because Oamaru was picked to be the electronic trial for the 2013 census and many Tongans did not find the technology user-friendly.
Also, some might not have understood the importance of the census and did not take part.
Her group believed about 1000 of the about 2000 Pasifika people in Oamaru identified as Tongan.Waitaki Tongan Community president Kaliopeta Talanoa Palu said she believed the best way forward would to be to get local church leaders to encourage their congregations to take part in the census.
