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The enumerators misrepresented the situation

Dec 14, 2012 Letters

 

 

Dear Editor,
We have read, with some concern, an article published in your edition of December 9 captioned “Census enumerators get shortchanged.”
During the training for the 2012 Population and Housing Census the Enumerators were given clearly documented guidelines that would govern their receipt of remuneration for the field exercise. The document, titled ‘Financial and General Guidelines for 2012 Population & Housing Census’ had as its aims (1) To assist the Field Staff involved in the execution of the Census in understanding the financial procedures for payments and other related matters and (2)To facilitate timely and efficient payments to Field Staff.
In addition, the document outlined the payment method and the breakdown of payments based on the verification of submitted questionnaires. The payment schedule included (1) Retainer Fee – Half ($14,000) to be paid after the completion and submission of the field work to their respective supervisors and the balance payable after checking of completed work and certification by Supervisors and (2) Payment for completed  questionnaires will be effected after checking of the work and certification of same by the Supervisors.
At present work is still being submitted to the Census Office for final verification of the amount of work completed by each Enumerator and the Regional Census Coordinators themselves are also doing their respective checks before giving clearance for Enumerators to be paid both the second part of their retainer fee as well as the other fees for each properly completed and certified questionnaire.
The checking and certification is necessary as a quality control measure to ensure that enumerators have actually visited residents and properly recorded their responses to the questions.
In fact, during the Press Briefing hosted by the Bureau in October, the media representatives themselves had queried what were the procedures in place by the Bureau to ensure that enumerators would be paid for work actually done and if the Bureau had any systems in place to verify that households were actually visited as claimed and the respective information accurately recorded.
Thus in cases where there are concerns about a submitted questionnaire a process for review, including the possibility of contacting the resident for information, is activated. All of these checks and certifications are necessary to ensure the Bureau gets value for money, no different from the kinds of checks that any person purchasing a service would undertake before paying for same. More importantly, the ultimate intention of these checks is to ensure the accuracy of the Census.
In this regard, persons living in Guyana are urged to confirm that they have been counted by confirming with members of their household that the home was visited and information taken.  If your home was not visited please contact us on our hotlines: 227-3377 or 227-0480 to make any appointment for your household.
It is unfortunate that enumerators, though already aware of the payment process, choose to present this to the media in a manner that suggests wrongdoing on the part of the officers managing the Census.
We wish to remind enumerators of the process which was documented in detail and distributed during training.  We ask that they await the completion of the certification exercise for their payments.
We further encourage Enumerators to refrain from threatening conduct when enquiring about the payments.
We are grateful for your continued interest in Census 2012 and for ensuring that the information is available to your readers. We stand by our commitment to provide you with the accurate information to be included in your publication as soon as possible after a request is made.
Lennox Benjamin
Census Officer

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