Manchester custos rallies support for census

CUSTOS ROTULORUM of Manchester Garfield Green is encouraging persons to participate in Jamaica’s 15th Population and Housing Census, now under way.

Data collection began on September 13 in all 14 parishes and will continue until December 2022.

Speaking at a recent service at the Mandeville Seventh-day Adventist Church to mark the start of the census, Green urged residents of Manchester and all other parishes to cooperate as best as possible, be accessible, and give accurate information to the census takers.

“If you have bad dogs at home, tie them up and allow the census takers to come in; and if you are called on and you are having dinner, please answer them and give them the [time] it takes to do it (the questionnaire). Please cooperate,” he urged.

Green emphasised that the census is one of the most important and challenging tasks any country will undertake.

As such, he added, it is a process that must be done “meticulously, to ensure accuracy and dependability”.

“I encourage all the census takers to do their work with pride and to meet its objectives,” Green said, noting that the information collected will be “relied on for further socio-economic development and studies”.

Meanwhile, Northern Caribbean University (NCU) President, Professor Lincoln Edwards, also encouraged Jamaicans to participate in the census.

He noted that “scholars at NCU and other universities throughout Jamaica rely on STATIN for data to develop theories and ideas, and for their dissertations”.

The census is a count of the country’s population and provides social and demographic data, details of the housing stock, information at the community level, and on hard-to-count persons within the population.

The exercise is conducted once every 10 years and counts everyone in the country.

Jamaica’s census was initially scheduled for 2021, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The last census was done in 2011.