Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Trinidad and To­ba­go's 2010 pop­u­la­tion and hous­ing cen­sus would cost $83 mil­lion, Plan­ning, Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Emi­ly Dick-Forde said. She added enu­mer­a­tors would be­gin in­ter­view­ing house­holds on May 17 and that the col­lect­ed da­ta should be pub­lished in less than one year. She said so dur­ing yes­ter­day's launch of the 2010 pop­u­la­tion and hous­ing cen­sus at the ball­room of the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain. Dick-Forde said the cost of the cen­sus was es­ti­mat­ed at $83 mil­lion over a three-year pe­ri­od, which in­clud­ed the prepa­ra­tion pe­ri­od for the cen­sus that be­gan last May.

She said all per­sons must be able to ac­count for their lo­ca­tion at mid­night on May 16 since it was the ref­er­ence date for the cen­sus re­sults. She ex­plained: "The count (of per­son's in Trinidad and To­ba­go) changes every minute of every day: Peo­ple die, ba­bies are born, per­sons come in­to the coun­try, per­sons leave the coun­try. There­fore the count changes every day. "So a ref­er­ence date is cho­sen to es­tab­lish the day, date and time for which in­for­ma­tion is to be cap­tured." She in­di­cat­ed that plans were be­ing made for the 2010 cen­sus data­base to be placed on­line with query­ing fa­cil­i­ties and prop­er sta­tis­ti­cal dis­clo­sure con­trol.

She al­so re­vealed the cen­sus ques­tion­naire in­clud­ed two new ar­eas, the en­vi­ron­ment and In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (ICT), which brought its num­ber of sec­tions to 13.The oth­er sec­tions in­clud­ed de­mo­graph­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics, such as a per­son's age and gen­der; in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal mi­gra­tion; dis­abil­i­ties; health; ed­u­ca­tion; eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty; fer­til­i­ty and hous­ing, such as the qual­i­ty of the phys­i­cal struc­ture. "This is a sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment but one which will pay rich div­i­dends in en­abling us to ob­tain crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion need­ed to as­sist in rel­e­vant pol­i­cy pre­scrip­tions to con­tin­u­al­ly im­prove the qual­i­ty of life of all cit­i­zens in Trinidad and To­ba­go," Dick-Forde said.