Shortage of census takers won't hamper proceedings

WITH DAYS to go before the start of the 2011 Population and Housing Census that will cost the Government $1.4 billion, the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) is reporting that there are not enough census takers to carry out data-collection duties.

Director of census, demographic and social statistics, Valerie Nam, said this, however, would not hamper the activity to be rolled out across the island come next Tuesday.

Nam was speaking at the official launch of the programme at the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston, on Wednesday.

Changed their minds

She explained that a number of persons who had applied for the position changed their minds about doing the job.

"We are a little behind now in our planning in getting all our census takers in the field because of drop-out issue, so we still have to be finding replacements, so we will not have all of our census takers in place when we begin, but we will be all over the country," she disclosed.

In the meantime, Professor Gordon Shirley, chairman of the board of directors at STATIN, issued a plea to members of the public to be more welcoming to census takers, some of whom encountered challenges in acquiring the essential data.

He said there were already concerns about workers being attacked by dogs when they were doing the preliminary studies of the census.

"The institute has been faced with a growing challenge in collecting data in the gated communities and apartment complexes across the island, and we are making a special plea to residents in these communities to accommodate the work of the census workers this year," he said.

According to Deputy Prime Minister Dr Kenneth Baugh, persons should see the census collection as a meaningful way of providing the facts essential to Government for policymaking, planning and administration.