Editorial | Whither the census?

Mike Henry, a government member of parliament and former minister, used to argue that a large part of Jamaica’s problem was that it didn’t count its people often enough, and when it did it tended to undercount them.

The upshot, according to Mr Henry, governments just couldn’t get policy right. They, for instance, didn’t know where, to whom, or how much services they needed to deliver.

Which seems counter-intuitive since conducting censuses is an old science, to which Christian Jamaicans should be able to relate given their many mentions in the Old and New Testaments. Indeed, there is a report in Acts about the rebellion inspired by Judas the Galilean against one of these counts of Jews by the Romans for tax purposes. And there is the story in Luke of Joseph’s and Mary’s return Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea for a census ordered by Caesar Augustus, hence Jesus’ birth in a manger in Bethlehem.

There is a growing suspicion that Mike Henry might have been right all along; Jamaica is not so good at taking censuses. At least, we are making a poor showing of the current one.

The Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) has been at it for more than 330 days, since the census began on September 12 last year. And there is no indication of when it will end. Or if it will.

That date, if there is one, is perhaps classified information, known only to STATIN’s director general, Carol Coy, and her boss, the finance minister, Nigel Clarke, unless, cynics might claim, anyone else seeking access to the information first gets high security clearance.

PEOPLE’S TRUST

Those perceptions, unfounded they might be, do little for people’s trust in government and its institutions. Which is why Ms Coy and Dr Clarke should provide an update on the status of the census and when it will be completed. They should also provide assurance that the information being gleaned will still be credible and of value to policymakers.

Jamaica’s last census was conducted in 2011. It put the island’s population at 2,678,629. The next was to have been in 2021, but was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The postponement, presumably, gave the authorities more time to prepare.

Originally, the fieldwork for the current census should have been completed in a bit over five months, or by the end of March 2023. But it soon seeped out that the deadline wouldn’t be met. Census-takers were reported to be dissatisfied with their pay and disgruntled over their supervision and the general management of the enterprise.

In early March, both Ms Coy and Dr Clarke confirmed that there was a problem and that the time for the field work would have to be extended.

One of the issues, Ms Coy told a parliament’s standing finance committee, was the difficulty in recruiting field staff. STATIN wanted 7,000 people to capture demographic information from households. It was able to recruit only 4,800, or 69 per cent of the requirement.

Compensation was one issue. So STATIN, the finance minister said, doubled what it paid for each completed census form, from J$200, to J$400. But the staffing problem, Dr Clarke said, was exacerbated by Jamaica’s strong employment figures (the unemployment rate at the time was 6.6 per cent) which, in part, influenced a high turnover of staff.

“The nature of the challenge has to do with the tightness in the labour market and the availability of persons to fill that role (census-takers),” the minister said.

AMPLE TIME

Those comments, however, were more than five months ago. That is more than ample time for Ms Coy to have implemented the new approaches to the census, which, as she told the committee, STATIN had in the works. This should include fixing its staff problem.

Indeed, while Ms Coy and Dr Clarke were whingeing about their difficulty in finding workers, others, like the information minister, Robert Morgan, suggested that they weren’t looking in the right places.

In his semi-rural parliamentary constituency in the parish of Clarendon, Mr Morgan said at the time, there were many qualified school-leavers seeking jobs, but didn’t know that STATIN was recruiting.

Julian Robinson, the shadow finance minister, who represents a constituency in the capital city, claimed that there were cases of people trained as census-takers waiting to be called, but hearing nothing.

In the government’s budget for the current fiscal year, Dr Clarke earmarked $1.23 billion for the census. The year before it was $2.6 billion.

It would be useful to hear how much of that money has been spent, and whether taxpayers, including those who remain uncounted, are getting a real value for their cash, and/or if they will be required to cough up more money.

In other words, there is a need for a full and clear report on the census and whether Mike Henry should cling to his long-standing belief and concerns.