National Census 2012 prepares for language barriers

National Census prepares for language barriers

Chief Statistician, Lennox Benjamin

Friday September 14, 2012 Demerara Waves

The Portuguese and Chinese language barriers are expected to be a key hurdle that enumerators for the National Population and Housing Census intend to cross.

Census Day is September 15 when 3,500 enumerators would begin fanning out across the 83,000 square mile country to interview all persons residing in Guyana during the next six weeks.

Chief Statistician of Guyana’s Statistical Bureau, Lennox Benjamin acknowledged that the larger number of Brazilians and Chinese will be a challenge for the 2012 census. That’s unlike the 2002 census when one of the bugbears was the violent crime spree.

He said a pilot census was held in May, 2012 to test the questionnaire among the average household and non-English speakers. “We do have a challenge and we would be working with the Brazilian Institute and the Chinese Association in terms of facilitating those enumerators, those interviews and where possible translation or communication assistance could be given to our field enumerators.

Benjamin said this year’s census could very well reveal the need for a multi-lingual approach. “The census would possibly reveal several things that would have policy implications- one would be whether in terms of our school system we now need to seriously address the building of a multilingual capacity among even our school children and adults,” he said.

Already, some entities like Demerara Mutual Life Assurance, Nigel’s Supermarket and a number of taxi services place advertisements in Chinese and Portuguese due to the huge influx of Brazilians in the mining sector and Chinese in trade.

Guyana is spending US$4 million (GUY$800 million)- totally funded by government- to conduct the census in keeping with its Caribbean Community (Caricom)-wide and international commitments.

Benjamin noted that it was not profitable for Guyana and several other Caricom countries to sell its data to other entities like the University of Minnesota for a much lower cost than that spent on the exercise. “A few countries may have acceded to some extent. Guyana has not because first of all we are talking about significant investment…for this census and I don’t think what they are offering comes anywhere near to what has been invested nationally in putting together that mammoth population and housing database,” said the Chief Statistician.

Finance Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh says the census-data is a major guide to decision makers in government and the business community.

“That indicator set then informs decision making, simple things like the changing gender demographic or the geographic dispersion of our population or the changing age distribution of our population …will inform decision making…it is where one sees the most rapidly growing population that one has to plan for delivery of services…when one sees that one population is getting older or the people is surviving longer…one has to be pre-emptive in the policy formulation to anticipate the fact that one is surviving for longer,” he said.

“The business leaders also actively use the data generated by the census…more than any other…the academia makes active use of the data…the importance of the exercise therefore cannot be over emphasized,” he added.

President Donald Ramotar and Prime Minister Samuel Hinds would be the first to be visited by enumerators Saturday morning to mark the commencement of the nationwide data collection exercise. The homeless and ships’ crew will also be counted.

Benjamin said it is an offence for persons to refuse to be interviewed by enumerators.  Officials of the Statistical Bureau, however, try to persuade persons before taking legal action, he said.

Guyana’s 2002 census showed that the official population is 751,223 persons.