Order signed for Guyana census to kick-off next month

Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh on Tuesday signed the mandatory Census Order and Regulations as required under Chapter 19: 09, the Statistics Act of the Laws of Guyana, notifying that September 15 is Guyana’s 2012 Census Day.

Guyana’s impending census is part of the global round of Population and Housing Censuses for the current 2010 round, whereby almost all countries which are members of the United Nations have conducted and completed their national censuses during the period which commenced in 2005, and concludes in 2014.
According to a Government Information Agency (GINA) release, during the meeting of the 43rd session of the United Nations Statistical Commission, the highest global body for policy making in statistics, held at the UN Headquarters in February of this year.
A resolution was passed on behalf of the secretary general, urging all governments which had not yet executed their National Population and Housing Censuses under the current 2010 Round, to make every effort to do so before the end of the 2010 Round in 2014.
Dr Singh said because of the massive, demanding and costly nature of the census exercise, this activity in most countries is held just once every 10 years.
“Guyana has traditionally organised its censuses with the rest of the other Caricom group of countries, under the coordination of the Statistics Division of the Caricom Secretariat. For this round, except for Haiti, which has been unable to mount a census because of its devastation by natural disasters in recent years, all other countries, except for Guyana and Suriname, conducted and completed their national censuses in 2010 or 2011.”
The minister said his signing of the order on Tuesday coincided with the completion of an intensive eight days of training for some 100 regional census coordinators and assistants.
Area coordinators recruited from and assigned to all 10 regions of Guyana and other bureau staff will be in the frontline of training and management of the enumeration activities in every area and region of Guyana.
“In fact, these core persons just trained will now disperse to all 10 regions to train the 3000-plus enumerators from all walks of life, who have applied and have been selected for training as enumerators and supervisors,” the finance minister said.
He said too that the issuance of the Ministerial Order and Regulations came just one day after Suriname’s Census Day, which was on Monday 13, and which was defined inter alia by the commencement of enumeration at the first household, that of President Desi Bouterse.
“For Guyana, the issuance of the Ministerial Order and Regulations declaring Census Day in one month’s time, signals that all of the myriad preparations for this census which began more than three years ago, are in their final stages of completion and those Guyanese who have opted to be a part of this mammoth national exercise, managed by the bureau, will be ready to commence their work in four week’s time.”
He said the census is the only national exercise where every building is counted and every household within every building or any economic activity within each building are enumerated and/ or recorded, at the same period in time. The minister said that census is and has always been much more than a headcount; it is a check and evaluation of the changing size, composition, quality of life, economic activities, maternal health, fertility rates among other things.
He said the plethora of information that will be collected will assist the policymakers in determining whether Guyana is on track to achieve several of the Millennium Development Goals.
Besides, Dr Singh said that for the Caricom region, the census information of each individual country is eagerly awaited by the Caricom Secretariat in order to do a regional analysis of the whole region for the benefit of the region’s heads of government.