Village leaders prepare for census
On May 12th Belize’s 2000 Population Census gets underway. The Central Statistical Office which will be conducting the exercise has been holding several meetings with village leaders and chairpersons to brief them on the role they will play in making sure the Census reaches all parts of the country and is conducted in a smooth and fair manner. Today representatives from the Belize District met in Belize City. It was there that News Five caught up with Chief Statistician, Sylvan Roberts. Roberts appealed to the general public to cooperate with the officers in order to get the most accurate and complete information.
Sylvan Roberts, Chief Statistician
“First of all the country has to be divide up not what you call enumeration districts, or ED’s. Segments for our statistical administrative purposes comprising a manageable number of households or of number of people, average of about 750-1000 persons per ED. Now these ED’s will then be allocated to interviewers and the Ed’s are very important because they have clearly defined boundaries. This means that the interviewers should not and hopefully will not go outside their boundaries, so that we avoid duplication and secondly, it’s clear enough for them to ensure that they comb their entire ED and therefore avoid omissions. So if every interviewer stick within their ED then we have a census which is free of duplications and also omissions.”
Jacqueline Woods
“What sorts of questions are asked?”
Sylvan Roberts
“Traditional questions I must say on age, sex, educational level, economic activity. We try to get a question on income, we also have questions on housing of course, the type of dwelling unit, the type of materials you use for the walls, flooring, the roof, the source of the drinking water supply. Then we have a few environmental questions as well being asked this time. We also have questions on disability. For women between the ages of 14 and above, we have questions on fertility to help us with population projection purposes for example.”
Jacqueline Woods
“So it’s more than just finding out what’s the population of Belize?”
Sylvan Roberts
“Oh yeah. As you know, censuses have developed over the years to mean more than just counting the numbers. Whenever a census is done, most countries try to capitalise on the opportunity to collect much more information that just the number of people. So we are just following the tradition.”
“Well I would like to appeal with everybody to cooperate with us. First of all, the census is being conducted on a census act, which obliges us not to reveal individual information as usual. I was around in 1991 as census officer and I don’t think anybody can say any individual information was reveal about anybody who was interviewed then. Again, we won’t do that now, the information is being put together in aggregated form and be used for planning purposes, for business decisions at an aggregated level and for other important decisions and not to single out any persons or group for any ulterior motive.”
The last population Census was conducted in 1991. It is expected that the upcoming census will find around 250,000 people living in Belize.
