S.I.B. to Begin Recruiting and Training Census Takers

Diana Castillo-Trejo

On August eighteenth, cabinet endorsed the timeline of activities set out by the Statistical Institute of Belize to prepare for the May 2022 Population and Housing Census.  Cabinet also agreed to provide the necessary funding to conduct the survey.  It had been scheduled for 2020, but viewers may remember, it was postponed because of COVID.  On Wednesday, the Acting Director-General at S.I.B. announced that a recruitment campaign for census takers will be re-launched in September.

Diana Castillo-Trejo, Acting Director-General, S.I.B.

“At the beginning of September, and at the same time, we will restart our public awareness activities. So, from there, we have pretty much a packed schedule in terms of Census preparations. We’ll recruit, and we’ll start training early next year. We have 3 rounds of training, and that leads us directly to the start of data collection in May. We are – as part of our recruitment, we will have to give preference to persons who apply who have already been vaccinated, of course, because these persons are the ones who will have the most face-to-face contact with households. And we will make every effort to follow all guidelines provided by the Ministry of Health and Wellness in terms of making that data collection process as safe as possible.”