Editorial | STATIN versus ancient Rome

It’s a good thing, or so we think, that the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN), the government’s data collection agency, will conduct a census of people with disabilities.

After all, governments need good population and demographic data to help them design credible economic and social policies.

Let’s hope, therefore, STATIN is better at counting people with disabilities, a seemingly more complex task than they have proven to be in totting up the entire population, which the agency has been at for nearly three years, and says it will complete by the end of next March.

The number of people with disabilities (PWD) in Jamaica has variously been put at between three and six per cent of the island’s population. But with an estimated 16 per cent of the world’s population (over 1.3 billion people) are people living with having some form of disability and the World Health Organisation (WHO) saying that between 15 per cent of the 17 of populations of developing countries are PWD, it is quite likely that Jamaica’s figure is severely underestimated.

Indeed, using the WHO ratio, it would mean, as Christine Hendricks, the executive director of the Jamaica Council for Persons with Disabilities (JCPD), a government oversight body, pointed out in a February speech, there are between 450,000 to 500,000 Jamaicans with some form of disability. Yet, only a little more than 17,000 are registered with Dr Hendricks’ agency.

“What that says to us is that we are a far way from reaching the number of persons with disabilities in Jamaica to have them registered,” Dr Hendricks said.

‘SPECIFIC CENSUS’

With the varying estimates of people with disabilities, the JCPD wants a “specific census” done: the disabilities they have; their health status; where they live; the work they do; their education standards; and so on.

It is this project that the labour and social security minister, Pearnel Charles Jr, announced last week during his contribution to Parliament’s annual sectoral debate.

Accurate data on people with disabilities, and an updated JCPD register, Mr Charles said, would help to “ensure that no one is left behind”.

No one would argue with either Mr Charles’ intent or analysis. Except that given STATIN’s recent track record at counting citizens, Jamaicans would be forgiven – by STATIN, even – if they were a bit sceptical about if, or when, this one will be completed.

After a year’s delay because of the COVID-19 pandemic, STATIN began Jamaica’s decennial national census in September 2022. It was to have been completed by early the following year. It is still not finished.

Or more accurately, while the individual head count of citizens was cut short, new methods developed to compensate for short circuited field work, and perhaps some data left uncaptured, the reports are still being worked on.

“We are looking to have the report on the census completed in fiscal year, 2025-2026,” STATIN’s acting director general, Leesha Delatie-Budair, told Parliament’s Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC) last August.

The 2025-2026 fiscal year ends on March 31, 2026.

BEDEVILLED WITH PROBLEMS

The census-taking has been bedevilled by problems from the start, causing deadlines to be established and abandoned, and finally, for STATIN’s officials to speak of a completion date only in generalities, if not hushed tones.

Early on, field staff complained about wages, or that they not were being paid enough for interviews. They quarrelled as well about the length of time it took to receive their money.

Wages were raised, but then STATIN said that it had problems recruiting competent staff.

Then news leaked about communications problems between internal managers and analysts and field staff.

These were followed by the redesign of some elements of the data gathering and analytic elements of the process, and by Ms Delatie-Budair’s “in fiscal year 2025-2026” statement on deadlines.

It is unlikely that when Caesar Augustus ordered that famous census in the colonies, which caused Joseph and Mary to return from Nazareth in Galilee, to Bethlehem in Judea (hence Jesus’ birth in a manger because there was no room for Joseph and Mary in the ‘inn’ or ‘kataluma’ of Bethlehem, per the Gospel of Luke) it took nearly as long as Jamaica’s current exercise.

There is a question: Will STATIN be able to gather the information for the census of people with disabilities without being distracted from the national one?

By the way, will this data now form part of the broader report, and perhaps key the JCPD, will it?

The information is necessary to inform policy.