9 Years: Unacceptable

October 28, 2009 by Taran Rampersad

When I got an email this morning with the title of 'Unacceptable' from Raul Bermudez, through the main computing email list of Trinidad and Tobago, I wondered what it could be this time. There are plenty of things that I believe should be considered unacceptable in Trinidad and Tobago. Rather than list those, I'll get to the meat of the email.

The content of the email was a simple link to Andy Johnson's article, Standard of living 'generally acceptable'.

I read. It's about information that has just been released from the 2000 census. 2000. A primary school student would be able to surmise that the information is 9 years old, but that isn't Andy's fault. 9 years. And there are many people who I know that claim that no one approached them about the census, so there is a question of how thorough the census actually has been.

But it took them 9 years to release the information. 9 years. Likely, the report has only now been released - and that means for the last 9 years, the government has been doing planning for infrastructure and the future without data to substantiate it. And those plans have been enacted in the form of annual budgets that make as much sense as the lack of hard data behind them. 

This means that the population being estimated in the budget and in the Trinidad and Tobago Central Statistical Office (T&T CSO) has given inaccurate percentages for many things. On their website they claim that the Unemployment Rate 2006 4th Qrt  was 5.0% - but 5% of what? The accuracy of the census is in question, therefore the population is in question, therefore the percentages for unemployment are in question.

How do they conjure up this data without an unquestionably accurate census? How can the government do effective planning when the census, assuming accuracy, is 9 years old? While everyone has their panties twisted in Parliament over all sorts of things, the very foundation of planning is built on sand. They might as well meet every 9 years when they have data to work with. Everything else is 'spinning top in mud'.

Surely the census can be done and reported more quickly. We have all these wonders of technology all around us and yet somehow we don't get things back for 9 years. It isn't as if the technology didn't exist 9 years ago.

I can't speak for anyone else, but if I were directly involved in running a country, I'd want hard data that would allow me to make informed decisions. That this topic hasn't made the news itself is disturbing; I'd expect someone who cared about their duties to make some noise about waiting 9 years for a report.

I'd want a census, not a history lesson.

Permalink