Census workers restive

THERE is mounting frustration among census takers and supervisors, contracted for their services in the 2022 Population and Housing Census, who have cited several challenges facing their teams as they continue to carry out their duties.

Chief among these issues is not getting paid on time, and a backlog of money owed to them that has not been paid.

In March, Dr Nigel Clarke, Minister of Finance and the Public Service, who has portfolio responsibility for the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN), stated that a 100 per cent salary increase was to be offered to census takers to help motivate them to complete the project.

The urban census taker would be paid $56,000 for travelling (previously $30,000), $400 per household questionnaire completed (previously $200) and $800 per individual questionnaire completed (previously $400).

For rural census takers, they are expected to receive $61,000 for travelling (previously $35,000), $400 per household questionnaire completed (previously $200) and $800 per individual questionnaire completed (previously $400).

An employee who spoke to The Gleaner, on condition of anonymity, said they were informed that payments due under the increase would be made after the census was concluded and, as such, for the time being, workers were still being paid using the old rates.

A census taker who spoke with The Gleaner recently and wished to remain anonymous, disclosed that the questionnaire payments were not paid all at once. Instead, the first half is received prior to, and the remaining portion is to be paid at the conclusion of each enumeration district (ED).

An ED is a geographical region that can be counted by a census taker within the allocated time for data collection.

He claimed that he has not been compensated for several fortnights and that for the past four months workers have been experiencing this issue, resulting in more people walking off the job. He also lamented poor communication and the absence of an advisory to notify workers that their payments would be late.

“The director general has no clue what is going on (with) these challenges the census takers have been experiencing,” he added.

STATIN indicated in March that given the challenges of trying to recruit personnel to complete the approximately $2.4 billion nationwide exercise, only 4,000 people were recruited out of the 7,000 who were targeted.

BUREAUCRATIC CHALLENGES

Reports further stated that the trained individuals would later abandon their jobs after being unable to handle the difficulties they encountered while on the ground trying to collect information from citizens.

“The bureaucratic challenges that STATIN workers have to go through ... (have) persons dropping out at a fast rate, and I don’t think the minister knows this, he thought that it was persons saying that they (are) not working for the $400 per head while that’s not the case,” the census taker said.

He continued that the issue was much greater than an increase in the rate, but that there was a weakness in the internal processes of operation which interfered with the completion of the project.

He also stated that there was a lack of willingness to hire additional administrative personnel to review the questionnaires once they had been collected from the census takers, to ensure that workers would get paid on time.

Additionally, due to a limited number of administrative personnel reviewing the completed questionnaires and the possibility of them being overworked and tired, census takers are questioning the legitimacy of the copious amounts of rejected questionnaires being returned.

“They have only one IT administrator working for the entire project, so they are short on human resource,” he said.

“It’s like they (are) not approving anything,” another worker said, stating that her last fortnight payment (over a month ago) totalled $2, 100, of which taxes were deducted.

“I think it’s poor planning, poor communication, everything is poor on STATIN’s side ... so persons are quitting the job not necessarily because of the low payments, but because of the lack of motivation to keep going,” she said.

The data collection for the census, which commenced in September 2022, was originally scheduled to end in December of the same year but was, however, extended to end within the first quarter of 2023 to ensure maximum coverage of the Jamaican population, but is still ongoing.

When contacted by The Gleaner, director general of STATIN, Carol Coy, declined to comment on the criticisms made by the workers or provide an update on progress of the census, as she would need to first officially present a report to Minister Clarke.

asha.wilks@gleanerjm.com