Roberts anticipates greater efficiency for Census process

Mechanisms have been implemented to ensure that the data collected from this year’s census exercise is processed more quickly than was done previously.{{more}}

Gatlin Roberts, Chief Statistician and Census Officer within the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, at a press conference on Thursday, June 14, said that this was done in an effort not to repeat the events of October last year, when the information collected was destroyed by fire on the third floor of the Administrative Complex.

She explained that liaison officers have been included this year to work along with field officers, to assist them to return the questionnaires much sooner.

This, Roberts explained, is something that the staff at the census division had been working on even last year, but many field workers said that they found it difficult to do so, based on the problems they experienced in the field.

“Each (liaison officer) [is] assigned to a census division, so they would interact on a regular basis with the census supervisors and with the other field staff, so that we can stay on top of what is happening in the field and to encourage them to bring in the work much faster,” Roberts said.

She also explained that there are persons whose task it will be to look through the questionnaires to make sure they are ready for processing.

“So, we hope not to have a repeat of last year and that all the questionnaires would come in, not at the end of the process, but rather, come in intermittently, so that we can capture them and start working on them,” Roberts said.

She also contended that this should assist in ensuring that the final data gets out much quicker.

“Because we are already a year behind…,” she explained.

The government was forced to redo the 2011 Population and Housing Census after the data was damaged by fire.

It was subsequently confirmed by Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves that another census would have to be conducted.

The fire occurred, according to the prime minister, after field workers had completed over four months of work and the data was being prepared for input and eventual analysis.

The prime minister said investigators had determined that the fire was caused by a fan which had been left on overnight in the census office.(DD)