Bajans urged to cooperate in census

Barbadians are being urged to support the National Population and Housing Census to be conducted this year.

The exercise usually takes place every ten years, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic which surfaced in 2020, it was delayed.

However, introducing the Statistics (Validation of Listing Exercise) Bill 2021 in the House of Assembly on Tuesday, Minister in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Investment Marsha Caddle spoke about the importance of Barbadians cooperating in the exercise.

She believed that coupled with the building ID project being carried out by the Ministry of Housing, Government can collect the most credible information to develop the best policies on behalf of its citizens.

Caddle explained: “The Ministry of Housing has been doing some very forward thinking work to establish building IDs so that we can more quickly identify structures. . . locate people and so that we can more clearly and cleanly create an environment where any business that depends on location information is now better off and in a better place to do its business. In order to make those [delivery] businesses as profitable as possible, in order to be able to reduce overheads and the time searching for where somebody is located, driving around wandering. . . those building IDs give a precise location of how individuals, companies, residences can be found.

“It means that it is able to help small businesses in terms of making them more efficient and it also means that we are also able to put this new layer of data together with other kinds of information that we have.”

“When we put that together with a well-done census, a well-done survey of living conditions, that gives us the richest set of information that we can have to plan across the policy areas – from housing, to the Disaster Emergency Management, to every single area of work that this Government does, provides services to, and to protect its population,” Caddle added.

The St Michael South Central MP also sought to assure Barbadians that information gathered by way of the census was protected under the Data Protection Act and the Statistics Act, and use and sharing of it is restricted to

government agencies and those officers that are empowered under the law to observe and analyze that data.

Minister of Maritime Affairs and Blue Economy Kirk Humphrey also encouraged Barbadians to cooperate with the listing officers and enumerators.

He said Government must have the information to plan efficiently, both at home and on the international stage.

The Statistics (Validation of Listing Exercise) Bill 2021 was intended to validate information collected by listing officers in the field June 7-11 and July 1-6 this year. Caddle said the exercise began prematurely, before the regulations that govern it had been fully gazetted. (KC)