Households to be surveyed in coming weeks

The Bureau of Statistics will be conducting a Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) in the coming weeks across the country to check on health-related issues.
This was according to an advertisement published in the Sunday newspapers.
The sixth round of MICS, according to the Bureau, was launched by the Government on August 23 last year and is an international household survey designed to obtain information on families to guide national development policies as well as programmes to improve Government’s response to the needs of the population, and monitor Guyana’s progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Bureau when contacted on Sunday by Guyana Times was reluctant to share additional information on the survey.
It is, however, understood that some 8700 households will be visited during the period. Officials at the agency could not say specifically when the programme would roll out although its staffers are expected to conduct the survey.
This newspaper understands that officials will be testing the salt used by households for iodine, as well as the water for impurities.
Children under the age of five years within the visited households will also be weighed and measured during the survey. Vaccination cards are also expected to be examined.
The Bureau said that persons’ consent and support for the initiative would be vital, so it urged Guyanese to participate.
On another note, the Bureau noted that the Household Budget/Survey of Living Conditions continues and is now entering its second phase.
“The Household Budget Survey and Survey of Living Conditions (HBS/SLC) commenced on the 1st November 2018 and will run for 12 months in order to capture the seasonal variation of the production of goods and services,” the agency said.
According to the Bureau, the first quarter data collection was successfully completed as selected households cooperated by answering questionnaires. It added that it looked forward to the support of locals as it moved towards the second quarter of the survey which commenced on February 1, 2019.
The objectives of this survey are focused on updating the Bureau’s data on the “basket of goods” which is used for computing the Consumer Price Index, facilitating the rebasing of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from the 2006 base year and to estimate poverty, poverty lines and other indicators or deprivation and to determine the characteristics, extent, geographic concentration, severity, and causes of poverty, including disaggregation by age, sex, and other criteria.
It also seeks to assess the current conditions affecting the welfare of residents based on quantitative household and individual level data, among others.
Persons conducting these surveys will be uniformed with badges to identify them.