CSO Director cautions staff over census security concerns

Although he described some of the census work enumerators are doing in certain areas as ‘scary’, Director of the Central Statistics Office, Raymond Phillips, sought to ease concerns over their safety and security.

According to Phillips, enumeration has to be done mostly in the evenings and on weekends because most of the BVI’s population works during the day.

“We try to impress upon the enumerators to get out of the field before seven, eight o’clock because you know, it could be kind of scary to be in certain places after that,” Phillips said in a recent interview with the government’s Public Eye programme.

When asked whether there is any type of security in place for enumerators during the time they would be collecting data, Phillips said the short answer is no.

“That is why we are gonna impress upon them to, you know, not to be out in the field too late,” Phillips added.

The CSO expressed that, because of its limited manpower, he did not believe that the police force would be able to provide the necessary support for the nearly 70 enumerators that would be in the field during the census exercise, which is expected to begin on June 15.

According to Phillips, most of the staff collecting data will be female enumerators. “So we are asking the enumerators, as I said, to be careful and not be out there too late.”

The CSO said it is in everyone’s best interest to get the census done properly and pleaded with members of the public to cooperate with enumerators in getting this accomplished.

He added: “I’m gonna try to put things in place to make sure that persons are not at the households too long. You know, because that has been the main complaint that I got in the previous censuses.”