Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Re­struc­tur­ing and Gen­der Af­fairs, Mary King, said yes­ter­day that the 2011 Pop­u­la­tion and Hous­ing Cen­sus was on­go­ing. King was re­spond­ing to a tele­vi­sion news re­port ear­li­er this week, which in­di­cat­ed that the field cen­sus had come to a halt. In a state­ment from her min­istry, King ex­plained that the field cen­sus has not stopped, but was chal­lenged by crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in cer­tain ar­eas and hu­man re­source is­sues.

De­spite these chal­lenges, the cen­sus enu­mer­a­tors have been work­ing in neigh­bour­hoods gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion from since the cen­sus be­gan in Jan­u­ary to date, King said. "We have been able to sus­tain field ac­tiv­i­ty be­cause a re­train­ing pro­gramme aimed at al­le­vi­at­ing the hu­man re­source chal­lenge is in place, along with on-go­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Po­lice Ser­vice, to pro­vide the sup­port need­ed in cer­tain ar­eas for cen­sus enu­mer­a­tors to ex­e­cute their jobs. "I am pleased to re­port there­fore that notwith­stand­ing the chal­lenges en­coun­tered, the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) has its re­quired com­ple­ment of 2,900 cen­sus enu­mer­a­tors who have been in the field dai­ly with sup­port from the Po­lice Ser­vice where nec­es­sary," ac­cord­ing to King.

The state­ment said that the cen­sus was ex­pect­ed to con­clude by the end of March, but Cab­i­net has giv­en a com­ple­tion dead­line of 30th April, 2011. The CSO re­port­ed that while the lev­el of co­op­er­a­tion by house­holds had been high, some ar­eas had yet to be sur­veyed. These will be sur­veyed by 30th April.