Although the Central Statistical Office (CSO) was able to complete the 2011 census within its budget of $83 million, crime was a major factor that hindered enumerators' efforts. "I am relieved, a census is a very demanding exercise in effort, time and resources. We were concerned about the challenges we were going to face with the crime situation and the impact of the perception of high crime on people's willingness to respond," said Dave Clement, director, CSO. The census took place from January 9 to May 31. The last census was conducted in 2000. Clement is satisfied that the census was completed without any of the enumerators being injured or attacked in any of the high crime areas.
"There was the situation in the crime hotspots where our enumerators had problems to travel and properly enumerate those communities where there was serious crime. It was my main concern. I wanted to ensure that this census was conducted without any injury or loss of life. The exercise was completed and there was no serious reports." Some of the crime areas that they were concerned were Picton Street, Laventille; Nelson and Duncan Streets, Port-of-Spain; Beetham Estate, Enterprise in Chaguanas; Bagatelle and Water Hole in Cocorite. "We were consulting with the police from different divisions who provided support to the exercise, but we asked them not to be too visible when our enumerators approached households. It may have affected people's willingness to respond," Clement said in an interview on Monday at the CSO's office on Independence Square, Port-of-Spain. CSO staff were able to "successfully" cover these areas.
Accessing gated areas
Another challenge enumerators faced was getting into the gated communities. "In fact, the greater challenges came from the gated communities. The reaction to the crime and not knowing who is bona fide or not, although our enumerators did carry IDs. Some people were just not willing to expose themselves to any risk," Clement said. Apart from them being suspicious of the activities of the enumerators, getting them when they were at home was another problem. "Many of the people who live there are business people and professionals who would leave early and come back late. In some gated communities, the gates were not manned by staff sentry or so. The enumerators had to wait to see people entering. So we did visit all areas, but we were not able to make contact. We define that as 'no contact.'"
He estimated that ten per cent of the census were non-responses: this included non-contact and non-refusal.
"The refusal rate was very low. Those were people who refused to respond. The non-contact would be the persons who were not at home and could not be interviewed. We won't know exactly until we have done all the computation, but based on report estimates, our completion rate is 90 per cent. It is better than 2000 when we had an 88 per cent completion rate and 12 per cent non-response. But even a ten per cent non-response in a population of 1.2 million is a significant number."
Field staff
The CSO had 3,000 enumerators in the field, 600 supervisors, 315 field editors, 105 technical areas supervisors. They were all supervised by eight zone co-ordinators.
The eight zones across T&T were:
1. Diego Martin/Port-of-Spain
2. San Juan/Laventille
3. Tunapuna/Piarco
4. Arima/Sangre Grande
5. Mayaro/Rio Claro/Princes Town;
6. San Fernando/Penal /Debe/Siparia /Point Fortin
7. Chaguanas/Couva/Tabaquite/Talparo
8. Tobago
Each enumerator had an enumeration district map which covered an area of between 150 and 200 households. "People were very receptive. That the non-response was just about ten per cent and not higher indicates that people were receptive. It was challenging in that to secure a response took several visits. People left early and came back home in the night, so enumerators went back four, five or ten times."
Census budget
Clement gave a rough breakdown of what factors accounted for the $83 million bill to conduct the census.
"The Census Unit was created in 2010 to plan and manage the census and there were costs attached to it. These include salaries, equipment, hardware and software. Then we had to print the documents, then pilot test the questionnaires before we came up with the final questionnaire. Then the information for the data processing, like scanners, photocopiers and software to work with scanners. There were also the communication activities and advertising in the media is pretty expensive. Then we had to pay salaries for census enumeration itself, that is, to pay the field staff."
New questions
The CSO boss indicated that times have changed and there were new questions to the 2011 census that were not part of the previous census a decade ago. "This time we had a question on use of information technology, use of mobile phones, computers and the Internet. We had a question on international migration, so we wanted to know how many people who were here in 2000 would have left to go abroad. We also had a question on the environment and we looked at two things-the disposal of household garbage and environmental issues-that would have affected the households in their community."
Data for planning
The step will be the data processing of the information gathered. Clement hopes to have the results ready by July 2012. "By this time, we hope to produce and disseminate the results of the census. We are using scanning technology or what you call Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR). The software we are using is called Cardif Teleform. The software recognises the information that is scanned from the questionnaire. We had used scanning in the 2004 agriculture census. We had developed expertise in that area." The data when released will be used for a number of purposes, he said. "This type of information issued is for planning, it is used for policy formulation by Government, it is used by the business community.
The business community uses it for estimating market size and setting targets for what share of the market they want to capture. "The data is also used for education planning, the academic community of the University of the West Indies and by international organisations." The CSO will be conducting a post-enumeration survey from July 16 to July 31. "This is a sample survey where we go back to a small sample of the households which we enumerated during the census and we ask them questions and we compare the information in the post-enumeration survey with the first one."
Taking CSO to 21st century
Clement is looking forward to working with Dr Bhoe Tewarie, new Minister of Planning, the ministry under which the CSO falls. "We look forward to great things happening under his leadership. I know he is a data user. He's very interested in upgrading and strengthening our capacity and ability of our organisation and also ensuring we are provided with the resources." He said Tewarie wants to have the CSO re-structured. "He seems committed to this. He also challenged us to produce more. He's also interested in restructuring the CSO. Some time ago, there was a Swedish consultant who made recommendations to restructure the CSO. He has identified with that. He has encouraged us to use the latest technology."