Plans are falling into place for the long-awaited Housing and Population Census to be held in Antigua and Barbuda next year.

The Statistics Division is leading the process and has hit the ground running to ensure a smooth process.

Senior Statistician Tracelyn Joseph explains the mapping exercise for 354 Enumeration District, including Barbuda has been completed and respective committees formed to assist with the preparatory work.

“From that we launched our recruitment drive where we did it both online and in person. To date we have 736 applicants in our database and as a rule we have to interview everyone before we even do the training and so far we have interviewed 645 persons, so we have 91 interviews pending,” Joseph said.

The team has also worked to develop a questionnaire and manual, they are now looking to launch the Pilot Phase.

The pilot phase is essentially a mocked version of the actual census.

Another Official Deborah Barnes said three days of training has started, from Wednesday to Friday, and will cover ten Enumeration Districts.

The areas include Matthew Street, Clarehall, Obeez, Barbuda, Golden Grove School, Liberta, Jennings, Pares and Willikies.

“When you see persons in those areas we are doing the pilot for our census,” Barnes said.

Joseph further explained that the pilot phase is essential as it is used to test the strategies, procedures, concepts and definition and questionnaire.

“We are using tablets to collect the data so we have to make sure that everything is coordinated. We have to test out visitation records because we are listing everyone in the household,” she said.

“We have to test our manual is it in line with our questionnaire, does the enumerator understands what they are supposed to do. So after the pilot we have to adjust our plans based on what we get on the field,” she added.

The public is being encouraged support the national exercise.

The Pilot phase will commence on November 30 and conclude on December 20.