Carisa Lee

Re­porter

Carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Sta­tis­tics show that four per cent of women with­in the 15 to 49 age brack­et have ex­pe­ri­enced phys­i­cal vi­o­lence dur­ing rob­beries and as­saults in this coun­try.

This in­for­ma­tion is among sta­tis­tics the pop­u­la­tion can now ac­cess on a wide range of top­ics that af­fect women and chil­dren via a free app on their cell­phones.

The Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO), with the sup­port of the Unit­ed Na­tions Chil­dren’s Fund (UNICEF), launched a web­site (https://datanett.in­fo/) and an App that shows the fi­nal Sur­vey Find­ings Re­port of the 2022 Mul­ti­ple In­di­ca­tor Clus­ter Sur­vey 6 (MICS) at the Radis­son Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

The sur­vey was con­duct­ed be­tween Au­gust 1 to De­cem­ber 18, 2022. A rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 9,000 house­holds was tar­get­ed us­ing Com­put­er-As­sist­ed Per­son­al In­ter­view­ing tech­nol­o­gy for re­al-time col­lec­tion of da­ta.

The CSO said the house­hold re­sponse rate was 91.8 per cent (8,962 par­tic­i­pants), with the largest pro­por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion be­tween the 35-39 year age group for both sex­es.

Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son said the pur­pose of the sur­veys was to pro­vide in­sights on key in­di­ca­tors to en­able coun­tries to gen­er­ate ev­i­dence-based da­ta for use in na­tion­al poli­cies and pro­grammes.

“In the case of Trinidad and To­ba­go, it will as­sist us in keep­ing track of our Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy Vi­sion 2030 and its align­ment with our sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment goals, by help­ing to dri­ve the com­mon uni­ver­sal prin­ci­ple of leav­ing no one be­hind,” she ex­plained.

Di­rec­tor of Sta­tis­tics An­dre Blan­chard said the CSO has been mak­ing a lot of progress, and launch­ing the app was a suc­cess sto­ry, as it will help in­form de­ci­sion-mak­ing when it comes to two key groups in the coun­try.

“Da­ta on the sta­tus of women and chil­dren will al­low the gov­ern­ment to de­ter­mine what sort of so­cial in­ter­ven­tions are re­quired ... it shows where Gov­ern­ment needs to in­ter­vene and al­lo­cate re­sources to meet the needs of cit­i­zens,” he said.

He said while the re­port is a large one, some ar­eas showed a clear need for im­prove­ment, such as the com­plete vac­ci­na­tion rate be­tween chil­dren ages two and three, which was 55 per cent.

On the web­site, un­der the tab dash­board, there are sev­er­al top­ics, such as pro­tec­tion, which show the im­pact crime and vi­o­lence have on women and chil­dren. It showed 33 per cent of women be­tween the ages of 15-49 feel un­safe walk­ing in their com­mu­ni­ty af­ter dark in both ur­ban and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties.

Sta­tis­tics al­so showed that 4 per cent of women aged 15-49 years ex­pe­ri­enced phys­i­cal vi­o­lence, in­clud­ing rob­bery and as­sault.

Un­der the top­ic of drink­ing wa­ter, more than 99 per cent of women and chil­dren in ur­ban and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties have ac­cess to ba­sic or im­proved drink­ing wa­ter.

Oth­er in­di­ca­tors in­clude child mor­tal­i­ty, re­pro­duc­tive health, child health, ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tion and child func­tion­ing.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter Beck­les-Robin­son said the house­hold bud­get sur­vey and the sur­vey of liv­ing con­di­tions, which be­gan Jan­u­ary 2023, are sched­uled to con­clude by March 2024.