HAMPERED by the ability to attract suitably qualified census takers, despite the Government doubling the compensation package for such personnel, the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (Statin) has had to find innovative means to collect data.

Statin required 7,000 persons to undertake the 2022 Population and Housing Census which began in September last year and had been slated to be completed in December. The census entails the collection of data from all 14 parishes — 6,611 enumeration districts.

However, with just 4,800 people recruited, the process has been stymied and the new deadline set for March 31 will not be met yet again, Statin’s Director General Carol Coy has revealed.

Given this shortfall, Coy said Statin has had to put in place other modes of data collection within enumeration districts “so that we can move the process much faster using the current numbers that we have”.

Coy, who was speaking during Wednesday’s meeting of the Standing Finance Committee in Parliament, said this additional method of data collection, which Statin began two weeks ago, involved the deployment of teams into enumeration districts, which will be assessed this week into next week to see how quickly the exercise can be completed using this strategy.

She explained that the process of census taking normally entails one enumerator being deployed to one enumeration district, but with the new method, the data collection entity has created “sweep teams” to carry out the exercise.

“So these are persons who are very efficient, they are experienced and you carry a group into an enumeration district and so in about a weekend/two weekends you will complete an enumeration district. [Additionally], there is a fear factor because security is an issue in certain areas, so when we carry in a team, we hope that we will be able to get to those persons much better than when you send one census taker in the enumeration district,” she said.

Coy said Statin is also thinking of using the Web in order to get to some persons, especially in areas where persons will not allow census takers to access their building or they refuse to come out. “So what we want to see is what the take-up of that will be,” she said.

Meanwhile, Opposition member Julian Robinson questioned the reason for the high turnover of recruits, pointing out that while Statin trained about 7,000 persons, about 2,200 did not make the cut.

Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke explained that Statin is having challenges with recruiting more than 4,000 census takers at any point, agreeing there has been “a fair degree of turnover, in that people who have been trained have moved on”.

“The nature of the challenge has to do with the tightness in the labour market and the availability of persons to fill that role. We have since responded with a significant upward adjustment [by 100 per cent] in the [compensation of] census takers and those rates are per questionnaire and per family, to try and compete in the labour market for the persons that are needed,” he said.

He further noted, however, that census takers also have to understand that this is an engagement that they would have to commit to for a period of time. “You can’t do it and stop or do it and do something else. It would be full-time employment over a period of several months,” he said.

Robinson, however, said he believes the issue has to do with a breakdown in communication between Statin and the recruits.