Population and Housing Census 2011

The planning, design and execution of this, the fourteenth census, was carried out mainly by the staff of the Statistical Institute. A large number of the staff of STATIN from every Division participated in this exercise. The Director General, Miss Sonia Jackson as Census Officer, in accordance with the requirements of the Statistics Act, was responsible for the coordination of all census activities.

Field Organization
For administrative purposes the island was divided into 7 Regions, 62 Coordinator Areas and 1,029 Supervisory Zones (See Appendix III). A central Census Office was established in the KMA. Seven Regional Managers who were selected from STATINs permanent field supervisors operated from offices in the KMA, Linstead, May Pen, Black River and Montego Bay. Each of the 62 Area Coordinators maintained an office in a central location in the area. The field organization operated under the direction of the Director of Field Services.

Field Organization
Field enumeration started slowly on April 5, 2011 as many Census Takers had not been issued identification cards. For an identification card to be issued the area manager must have completed the selection process and submit the relevant information to the head office where checks have to be made to verify the training location of the individual. Photographs for identification were stored by training sites so this information had to be retrieved to request the identification from the service providers. The collection process limped for the first three weeks of April and returns were slow. Census takers began to express dissatisfaction with what they considered late payments of Training Fees. By the beginning of May with such payments made, the pace of enumeration picked up somewhat but census workers again began agitating for payments of claims for travelling even in some instances with very little or no work done. The militancy continued as the problems with these first payments were resolved very close to the pay period. Some persons threatened leave the job. At this time members of the senior staff of STATIN were kept busy responding to the media as they were approached by dissatisfied census workers. A number of supervisors and census takers gave up the job while others were relieved because of non-performance but by the time that began to happen, there were persons available as replacements. The data collection phase ended on August 31, 2011.

Challenges of Data Collection
The main challenges encountered could be summarized in the following- - the general hostility of the population with what was regarded as a 'government' project;

• the inability to relate their participation with immediate personal benefits;
• the belief that the information would be given to the tax collectors;
• violence in some areas and the inability to be out late at nights;
• incidents of dog bites;
• lack of access to gated communities;
• inefficient and unproductive census workers.