Census workers will only speak English and Spanish
Although the BVI has grown to become a multilingual community, enumerators for the national census will not be able to accommodate all the non-english speakers residing here.
Director of the Central Statistics Office, Raymond Phillips said his office is aware that various languages such as French, Spanish and others from Asian nations are represented in the community. But he said only Spanish speakers will be accommodated in the national exercise.
“It’s becoming a bit more complicated because, in the past, we just had to accommodate Spanish speakers. But now we have persons from Haiti, the Phillipines and in some cases, some of them don’t speak English. We are only going to accommodate the Spanish speakers,” Phillips explained.
Phillips said his office is hoping non-english speakers have at least one person in their households who knows how to speak English and can interact with the enumerators when the time comes.
Phillips added that the decision to provide Spanish-speaking enumerators was not difficult to make because of the large Spanish-speaking expat population in the BVI.
“Even prior to 2010, we knew we had quite a huge Spanish population so it was quite easy for us to determine that we needed to have some bi-lingual persons on the team,” Phillips revealed.
The 2023 census exercise will get underway in June. Enumerators are expected to collect information from June to August this year, but may continue data collection until the end of the year. Enumerators will be guided by digital maps and will endeavour to visit every home in the territory to gather information about how people are living in the Virgin Islands.
The last census exercise was conducted in 2010 and another should have been conducted in 2020. However, Phillips said the process was delayed by three years because of circumstances beyond his office’s control.
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We need to reduce the Spanish speaking population (who are predominately noisy, disrespectful, messy, working in nasty bars and having sex for cash with our men, and rude) and increase the Filipino population (who are quiet, respectful, don’t work in late night bars, polite and work hard).
Your great grand dad should had reduce the visits to San Pedro in D R
And la Romana, Barahona, boca chica, Consuelo etc etc.I bet is a woman writing…
They should be able to speak mandarin
YOU GOT THAT RIGHT , AND NOW THERE IS A SET OF WITCHES ( BRUJA ) , LEAVE THEIR FOOD ALONE UNLESS YOU WANT TO GET HOOKED ON THEIR SWEET SW**T FOOD , YHEN YOU WILL BE LICKING THEIR * AND ALWAYS COMING BACK FOR MORE LIKE A PUPPET , YOU ARE WARNED . SOME DON’T EVEN HAVE A LICENSE BUT THEY SELLING THEIR S**TTY FOOD FROM OUT OF THEIR HOUSE / THAT IS WHAT YOU EATING ( YUK ) ?
This is an English-speaking country, lest we forget. To even include Spanish is an act of generosity on the part of the Central Statistics Office. It is my opinion that anyone living and working (residing) in the BVI should have a working fluency in the English language. We need to set standards and abide by them. Anyone who cannot understand the basic questions asked in a Census should not even be considered as a resident. Tourists passing through can be excused.
It should be a requirement that anyone getting a work permit or applying for any type of residency speaks basic English
English is our official language.If they cannot speak it,they do not count.Period.
We forgetting this is a English speaking country.
We forgetting this is a English speaking country.
We are forgetting that this is an English speaking country.
Unfortunately English does not seem to be your strong point!
So only bilingual censors…speak English and Spanish?
Why not Englush and or Spanish ?