The Census report

Feb 10, 2026 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – How quickly the PPPC Government and its representatives find it convenient to erase from their memory what goes against their established narratives, what clashes with its endless propaganda that is now second nature. A census report that was long delayed, pretended to be a work-in-progress has been released, but only in preliminary form. The report has much to be questioned, what looks like some uneven work, and key pieces left out, either deliberately or by a matter of chance. Now it forms the basis for presidential pronouncements, is taken as though of scriptural origin by the government. How easily amnesia infects, how smoothly under the carpet is found as the best destination for the unanswered issues that roil.

The nation hears that unemployment is cut by more than half, as extracted from Labor statistics, and reported in the early census result. This is a government that hides statistics and reports, yet could locate numbers and push them into the public domain, when that suits its interests. How reliable are most components in the preliminary census report, how credible those who use it for their own propaganda shows?

The report can count only so many Venezuelans here, but can speak of the local population hovering close to a million. The admission was that data gathering was a challenge, which had to be the case, since only so few Venezuelans and others from the region could be reported with confidence. Guyana has experienced and continues to see more and more neighbors here, more in a steady stream than a flood, yet what is seemingly only a small fraction of them is reported. Given this state, it doesn’t require much mental energy to appreciate that so much more could be lacking on other census report numbers provided. Before, it didn’t provoke much of a reaction from the PPPC Government, when the call was for the three-year delay without publication of the census results to be over.

But now all of that is forgotten, doesn’t mean much, as Guyanese are informed about unemployment on a rapidly downward trend, and growth in many sectors of the economy. One of the figures that the president, vice president, and other senior government officials persist in sharing with the public is their concoction about low inflation, so low as to be in the low single digits. If there is anything that Guyanese know, it is that steeper and steeper prices are killing. From the rising cost of basic items of living, to the increasing amounts demanded by those providing basis services. Those are the pains that Guyanese have endured, with nothing but paltry relief coming to them in an economy with record trillion-dollar budgets and daily oil production over three-quarters of a million barrels. Considering the wreckage that continually higher prices inflicts on citizens, any leader, any government, that celebrates low and controlled inflation opens the door to ridicule.

The preliminary census report has its share of numbers, as such reports tend to be, yet is so vague on specifics that matter as not to be helpful. We absorb population numbers, but there is the mystery about how the demographics of Guyana shaped up, as of 2022, when emigration continues to be a drain on this country’s human resource pool. For certain, there is an ongoing influx of investors and fortune hunters to one of the biggest investment attractions in the world, if not the biggest, currently. But the best idea of how many foreigners are in Guyana is nothing but a guess, and what type there is more uncertainty.

However, when there is opportunity for the government and its spokespeople to paint themselves in the brightest light, and sell that to an information starved population, this is exactly what is done with vigor, and what Guyanese get. Citizens need information that they can trust on sensitive issues and areas, such as the true rate of unemployment, the real rate of inflation, an accurate rate of native population loss through emigration, and some believable rate on the flow of neighbors and foreigners into Guyana. Reputable international agencies have commented on the lack of official information on crucial areas. The PPPC Government says nothing, until it is propaganda time.

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Census report, Editorial, PPPC, Venezuelans

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The Census report

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