SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

For the first time, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s 2027 Na­tion­al Pop­u­la­tion and Hous­ing Cen­sus will col­lect da­ta on mi­grants, street dwellers and crime, as the coun­try pre­pares for a na­tion­wide ex­er­cise backed by a $50 mil­lion in­vest­ment and ex­pect­ed to cre­ate 3,500 tem­po­rary jobs.

Ahead of the na­tion­al ex­er­cise, the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) will launch a pi­lot cen­sus to­mor­row un­der the theme “To­geth­er We Count”, with na­tion­wide field­work ex­pect­ed to be­gin next June.

The cen­sus will al­so gath­er vi­tal in­for­ma­tion on hous­ing, health, un­em­ploy­ment, so­cial ser­vices and in­fra­struc­ture.

The find­ings are ex­pect­ed to pro­vide a foun­da­tion for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment plan­ning, re­source al­lo­ca­tion, pub­lic pol­i­cy for­mu­la­tion, in­fra­struc­ture plan­ning and the mon­i­tor­ing of de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties.

Re­li­able pop­u­la­tion da­ta help gov­ern­ment agen­cies as­sess whether ser­vices are reach­ing the com­mu­ni­ties and groups that need them.

On Thurs­day, the CSO’s di­rec­tor of sta­tis­tics Bruce Spencer, Min­istry of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary Can­dice Ram­saran and Shar­lene Jag­gar­nath-Patandeen, CSO’s act­ing cen­sus ad­min­is­tra­tor, shared in­sights on the pi­lot cen­sus with Guardian Me­dia, which would help pre­pare the CSO for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the 2027 Na­tion­al Pop­u­la­tion and Hous­ing Cen­sus.

The pi­lot cen­sus, which be­gins to­mor­row and ends on De­cem­ber 16, 2026, tar­gets 110 dis­tricts (104 in Trinidad and six in To­ba­go) and will in­clude in­ter­views with 5,500 house­holds.

Can­taro Vil­lage, Lange Park, Cap-de-Ville, Big Yard, Bon Air West, San­gre Chiq­ui­to, Bar­rack­pore, Hale­land Park/Mo­ka, and Pleas­antville are among the 110 com­mu­ni­ties in Trinidad that will be sur­veyed.

Ma­son Hall and Pi­geon Point have al­so been iden­ti­fied in To­ba­go.

These com­mu­ni­ties will range from squat­ting set­tle­ments to HDC de­vel­op­ments and even up­scale gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties.

Speak­ing at the CSO’s head of­fice in Port-of-Spain, Spencer said the 52-day pi­lot cen­sus is a “test­ing sys­tem” for its 100 enu­mer­a­tors, su­per­vi­sors and zone co­or­di­na­tors who have been rig­or­ous­ly trained over the last month.

This ex­er­cise will as­sess the enu­mer­a­tors’ in­ter­ac­tions with the pub­lic, how they use their tablets, and whether ques­tions are clear, rel­e­vant and eas­i­ly un­der­stood by re­spon­dents.

It will al­so iden­ti­fy chal­lenges, mis­takes and gaps be­fore the 2027 Na­tion­al Pop­u­la­tion and Hous­ing Cen­sus is im­ple­ment­ed next June.

While peo­ple may mis­trust and hes­i­tate to an­swer the 49 ques­tions, Bruce said enu­mer­a­tors would have to use their com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, in­flu­ence and pos­i­tive en­er­gy to win over re­spon­dents.

Ques­tions will cov­er ed­u­ca­tion lev­el, gen­der, mi­gra­tion, fer­til­i­ty, em­ploy­ment sta­tus, health chal­lenges, dis­abil­i­ties, mar­i­tal sta­tus and hous­ing ameni­ties.

House­holds will al­so be asked whether they are im­pact­ed by crime and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues.

“These ques­tions are asked be­cause we find that at this mo­ment in time, to get a count for that…a count for each per­son in the coun­try, that in­for­ma­tion is much need­ed. Once you get that in­for­ma­tion, you can make bet­ter de­ci­sions for ed­u­ca­tion, bet­ter de­ci­sions for crime, bet­ter de­ci­sions for hos­pi­tals…health and bet­ter de­ci­sions for hous­ing.”

Jag­gar­nath-Patandeen in­ter­ject­ed, say­ing an enu­mer­a­tor may ask a re­spon­dent how many bed­rooms their house has and how many peo­ple oc­cu­py the struc­ture.

“But the rea­son for that is to get a sense if there is over­crowd­ing, if there are peo­ple who need as­sis­tance. So it’s not to mind your busi­ness,” Jag­gar­nath-Patandeen said.

“I think one of the chal­lenges we have is that we pro­duce da­ta and the nor­mal lay­man does not un­der­stand the in­for­ma­tion. We want to break that down now. So when these things come around, they would be able to see clear­ly that da­ta is im­por­tant for their lives,” Bruce point­ed out.

For the first time, the CSO has shift­ed from us­ing its tra­di­tion­al pa­per-based sys­tem to a dig­i­tal process, us­ing tablets.

Us­ing their tablets, enu­mer­a­tors will up­load the re­spons­es to the CSO’s data­base, which Bruce as­sured would be pro­tect­ed by the CSO’s ro­bust cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.

“We have put in the high­est lev­el of se­cu­ri­ty.”

He al­so boast­ed that the CSO has an ef­fi­cient IT team and a back­up plan in case they en­counter glitch­es.

Jag­gar­nath-Patandeen dis­closed that all enu­mer­a­tors have signed an oath of se­cre­cy, agree­ing not to dis­close any col­lect­ed in­for­ma­tion.

“Once they in­put the da­ta on the tablet and the ques­tion­naire is com­plet­ed and you up­load the tablet, it comes off your tablet. So you would no longer have it on your tablet. But you are not to go home and dis­cuss the in­for­ma­tion with any­one.”

Safe­ty in crime hotspots; in­clu­sion of mi­grants

To nav­i­gate safe­ty con­cerns for the enu­mer­a­tors, Bruce said the CSO will part­ner with the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty “to be able to as­sist us in terms of ar­eas that are crime hotspots and so on. We’ll have to en­gage, of course, the com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers with­in those ar­eas as well, hav­ing chats and so on.”

While the pi­lot cen­sus will pri­mar­i­ly fo­cus on T&T na­tion­als, mi­grants and street dwellers would al­so be in­ter­viewed.

In Jan­u­ary, the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty launched a Mi­grant Reg­is­tra­tion Frame­work.

At the end of the reg­is­tra­tion pe­ri­od, the min­istry re­ceived 29,276 ap­pli­ca­tions rep­re­sent­ing more than 60 na­tion­al­i­ties.

Of these ap­pli­cants, 23,342 were Venezue­lan na­tion­als, with 16,829 be­ing chil­dren.

“Well, the idea with the cen­sus is that every­body is count­ed. So of course, we have the slo­gan ‘To­geth­er We Count’. Every­body in the ter­ri­to­ry is go­ing to be count­ed. Ques­tion­naires will be de­signed so that we can in­ter­act with the mi­grants in the Span­ish lan­guage,” Ram­saran said.

She said CSO needs to cap­ture ac­cu­rate da­ta which will feed in­to a process “to en­sure that the cen­sus next year is ex­e­cut­ed in a time­ly, stream­lined and ef­fi­cient man­ner.”

Asked about the over­all costs of the pi­lot cen­sus and Na­tion­al Pop­u­la­tion and Hous­ing Cen­sus, Ram­saran said that for fis­cal 2027 “an amount of $50 mil­lion has been al­lo­cat­ed for the cen­sus. This will be used to­ward con­duct­ing the pi­lot and the oth­er prepa­ra­tions for the ex­e­cu­tion of the cen­sus as well. It may be re­vis­it­ed de­pend­ing on the re­sults of the pi­lot and mo­bil­i­sa­tion costs. Es­sen­tial­ly, it is to have pre­pared­ness and to help the readi­ness for the cen­sus.”

Ques­tioned if an ad­di­tion­al al­lo­ca­tion may be need­ed, Ram­saran said for­tu­nate­ly the pi­lot cen­sus and the Na­tion­al Pop­u­la­tion and Hous­ing Cen­sus will be un­der­tak­en in one fis­cal year.

“So it is an­tic­i­pat­ed that costs will be man­aged in that re­spect. And there may be op­por­tu­ni­ty there­after to re­vis­it the al­lo­ca­tion. The idea is to have an ef­fec­tive sur­vey. A sur­vey with the req­ui­site re­sponse rates and cov­er­ing the pop­u­la­tion in T&T. So you want qual­i­ty sta­tis­tics. So if we have to come back and relook the fig­ure, that can be put on the ta­ble and pur­sued.”

The last Na­tion­al Pop­u­la­tion and Hous­ing Cen­sus, con­duct­ed in 2011, cost tax­pay­ers $83 mil­lion.

The planned 2020/2021 Na­tion­al Pop­u­la­tion and Hous­ing Cen­sus co­in­cid­ed with the glob­al COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, caus­ing the CSO to halt all cen­sus-re­lat­ed op­er­a­tions.

Bruce said about “3,500 enu­mer­a­tors,” and su­per­vi­sors would have to be trained “in the fol­low­ing year” for the Na­tion­al Pop­u­la­tion and Hous­ing Cen­sus, which is con­duct­ed in T&T every ten years.

Ram­saran said these 3,000-plus enu­mer­a­tors will work through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go to en­sure they cap­ture in­for­ma­tion from all house­holds.

Bruce said that af­ter com­plet­ing the pi­lot cen­sus, CSO will com­pile a re­port by year’s end and there­after make the nec­es­sary ad­just­ments for the Na­tion­al Pop­u­la­tion and Hous­ing Cen­sus.

Bruce plead­ed with the pop­u­la­tion to part­ner with the CSO dur­ing the pi­lot project to make this ini­tia­tive a suc­cess.

“I just want to re­it­er­ate to the pub­lic how im­por­tant this cen­sus is to us, which can help every­one.”

How to iden­ti­fy enu­mer­a­tors

Each enu­mer­a­tor will wear an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion badge con­tain­ing their name, pho­to­graph and a bar­code.

Re­spon­dents can scan the bar­code and up­load it to the CSO’s web­site to ver­i­fy the enu­mer­a­tor’s iden­ti­ty be­fore con­duct­ing an in­ter­view.

The enu­mer­a­tor’s iden­ti­ty can al­so be ver­i­fied on the CSO’s web­site.

Enu­mer­a­tors will al­so car­ry tablets print­ed with the CSO and min­istry’s lo­go on the back.

They will al­so wear blue vests and caps, bear­ing the CSO’s em­blem, for easy iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Jag­gar­nath-Patandeen ad­vised the pub­lic that enu­mer­a­tors are not al­lowed to en­ter homes to view their liv­ing con­di­tions.

“The in­struc­tions are that they are sup­posed to stand out­side your prop­er­ty or gate and ask an adult for per­mis­sion to in­ter­view them. That adult must be 18 years and over.”

Swarats­ingh out­lines cen­sus plans

Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Dr Kennedy Swarats­ingh has out­lined plans to con­duct the pop­u­la­tion cen­sus, fol­lowed by busi­ness and agri­cul­tur­al cen­sus­es in 2027.

Speak­ing dur­ing a meet­ing of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, he said ap­prox­i­mate­ly 39 peo­ple would be re­quired for the pi­lot project, while the full cen­sus would re­quire more than 3,000 work­ers.

He ex­plained that cen­sus op­er­a­tions were time-spe­cif­ic and that he did not in­tend to re­tain work­ers be­yond the pe­ri­od re­quired to com­plete their as­sign­ments.

Re­cruit­ment for the full cen­sus would be ad­ver­tised na­tion­al­ly, but the Gov­ern­ment must first re­view the pi­lot project’s find­ings and ob­tain Cab­i­net ap­proval be­fore pro­ceed­ing with the wider ex­er­cise.

The min­is­ter said the $50 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for the cen­sus would cov­er the pi­lot project and prepa­ra­tions for the full ex­er­cise in 2027.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about the re­vised $20 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion for 2026, Swarats­ingh said sig­nif­i­cant prepara­to­ry work had al­ready been un­der­tak­en, in­clud­ing de­vel­op­ing ques­tion­naires with the as­sis­tance of the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme and oth­er tech­ni­cal ex­perts.

The process al­so in­volves de­vel­op­ing a tablet-based sys­tem, procur­ing equip­ment and train­ing enu­mer­a­tors. Ques­tion­naires are be­ing pre­pared in both Eng­lish and Span­ish.

The CSO is be­ing sup­port­ed by a project co-or­di­na­tor fund­ed by the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank, along with two ad­di­tion­al con­sul­tants.

Swarats­ingh said the pop­u­la­tion cen­sus would be fol­lowed by a busi­ness cen­sus and an agri­cul­tur­al cen­sus, with the in­ten­tion of col­lect­ing ag­gre­gat­ed da­ta through­out cal­en­dar year 2027. The busi­ness cen­sus is in­tend­ed to es­tab­lish a com­pre­hen­sive and re­li­able data­base of busi­ness­es op­er­at­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.