By Orville Williams
The population census previously scheduled to take place across Antigua and Barbuda this year will be delayed until 2022 due to the continued impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
That announcement was made on state media yesterday by Chief Statistician in the Statistics Division, Statchel Edwards.
“The last [census] was in 2011 and we were scheduled to conduct one in May 2021. Of course, with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the decision was made to postpone the census to 2022.
“We’re currently in discussions with the relevant authorities to see how best we can execute the census safely and soundly in this current environment,” he disclosed.
Edwards was also speaking on yesterday’s recognition of Caribbean Statistics Day, which was done under the theme “Leave No One Behind – Everyone Counts”.
It is the same theme that was used for the launch of the 2020 Round of Population and Housing Census and the Chief Statistician explained why the same theme was chosen.
“It was decided that we’re going to adopt that theme to show the importance of census; for us to go forward as a country and as a region, we need to be able to have statistics on our population.
“[This is] so that we can make decisions based on information that is sound, that has been compiled using specific standards and methodologies and that can be used to guide not only decision-making, but [also] to monitor the impact of various policies to be used by the business community [and] the general public,” Edwards said.