Behind the scenes in

•It's hard work being an enumerator

Behind the scenes in Fiji’s new census

From Basil M. Sellers, in Suva Are you interested in social welfare? Do you wish to see how the other half lives? If you are and you do, then there is no better way than to join the temporary staff of a census com missioner.

THE 13 fascinating months I have just spent on the staff of the Fiji Census Commissioner were well worth it.

How does one start on such a gigantic operation in such a wide spread colony as Fiji, with its multi racial population and the many dif ficulties of language, customs and creeds? First of all, the Government has to engage a trained demographer as Census Commissioner. Demo graphy is the study of statistics of births, marriages and deaths.

You then beg for some office space, a typewriter or two, and go to work.

Work starts at the Government Archivist, where you draw out all the past records of your predecessors for the last two censuses and if you are lucky (we weren’t) you will find copious notes on what went wrong.

The idea is to study past tech niques and try to adapt them to the present circumstances. What worked well in 1946, or 1956, will probably be outmoded in 1966.

Your boundaries change

Now you need maps. You get hold of the largest scale maps of the colony you can beg or borrow, and the more detailed ones of the im portant towns. What you are look ing for are changes in boundaries, for what was a rural area in 1956 is probably now a thriving urban district.

We were delighted to find an aerial mosaic of Suva, but it was out of date. We were assured we could get an up-to-date one if we were pre pared to pay for it, if the weather were suitable for taking pictures and if the Deputy-Director of Lands, who is an old air force photographer, could be spared from his many other commitments.

We bargain about the cost and agree to split it 50-50. Then the fun

started. Fine day, spare plane avail able, but no photographer. Photo grapher all present and correct, plane available, low cloud appears!

It seems there are nearly as many computations to aerial photography as there are to one of Mr. Little wood’s football coupons.

But one day all the pieces fit to gether and a senior draftsman— that most patient of God’s creatures —burns midnight oil with knife, paste and hardboard, fitting the pic tures into a finished product.

Now that we have our maps and photographs we can divide the whole colony up into what are called enumeration areas; which is no light task. District Commissioners and District Officers get these, and break them down into enumeration districts.

Which is no light task!

Work for the DO

An overworked District Officer has to find the time to make special checks of his particular parish, be cause while the ideal size of a dis trict, from the past experience of the Census Commissioner, is placed at 100 dwellings, some districts with fewer houses may be larger in size and take more time to poll their small areas.

The DC sends back the maps with his estimate of the number of dwel lings in each enumeration district; then the expert eye of the Com missioner studies them all. What does the expert eye see?

This district is wrong because in picking out a nice mountain as a geographical boundary the District Officer has strayed over the tribal boundary into the adjoining terri tory, and this will never do if we are to get correct estimates of tribes.

And that district is too large, even though it has only a small popula tion, for how can the poor

Urban areas were of special interest

enumerator cover all that ground road, river and trail in the time?

Some queries cannot be decided i paper, so the Census Commission© staff go out and take a first-ha; look, make decisions, and the finally, fair copies of all these c tailed maps are prepared in duplies (one copy for your successor, 1976, poor fellow).

Urban areas turned out to be special interest in this census, common with other territories the has been in Fiji a surge of peo] towards the towns looking for wo: and obviously everybody working a town does not live within the to 1 boundaries. So the time had coi to demarcate the urban areas —1 areas where the majority of peq are daily commuting to work.

Urban study is a highly speciali: part of the demographic art, quiring much research, and talks w transport authorities, town plann officers, and such others. Fiji \ able to engage a senior univers lecturer who had extensive expi ence in this particular exercise, c he devoted his long vacation to t most interesting study—at no c to Fiji.

Everybody in the act

While all this has been going the Census Commissioner has, ami other things, been trying to find what questions people want put the census forms. Here, everybi tries to get into the act!

Government officers of all si want all kinds of questions as! to support or refute their theories. Very interesting and e very useful, of course, but in an developed country like Fiji it necessary to keep these quest! to a minimum, otherwise there wc be pandemonium. So finally t number is brought down to 12, \ on© extra for the Indian hoi holders in the colony.

Next, these questions are frai into the simplest English possi The enumerators will have to tr late questions and receive answer a number of tongues—-Eng; Fijian, Rotuman, Hindi, Tamil, U Chinese and a number of otl Pacific languages—including A tralian.

Having made the questions sin you then go out and test them

Check, check and double check

some guinea pigs to see if there could be hidden traps, such as in one Australian census when a simple question was framed in what was thought to be a straightforward manner, aimed at discovering how long migrant householders had been living in the country. “What is the length of your residence in Aus tralia?” the question asked, and thousands took the tape-measures from their wife’s sewing basket and carefully measured their house front age.

Back in Fiji we are now at the stage where the Government Printer takes a highly competent hand, arranging to print all the forms, book of instructions, warrants of appointment, etc. They soon solve problems we suspected might be in soluble.

So now we can start work in earnest. We have to recruit and train some 850 enumerators, to gether with spares in case of sick ness, for once you start enumerating you can’t stop. And there are about 100 supervisors to be recruited and instructed.

Off go the headquarter’s staff again to every centre, to instruct district staff in the noble art of recording answers to the 12 commandments.

The majority of enumerators selected were schoolteachers —who turned out to be invaluable not the least be cause of their personal knowledge of many of the families they eventu ally enumerated.

Outer islands trips

In most areas District Officers gave four lessons to enumerators, the final one being attended by the Census Commissioner, who saw to it that the interpretation of the questions was standard throughout the colony.

In the outer islands a headquarters representative travelled with the local administrative officer as the enum erators were trained. This was to avoid expense of duplication. Each enumerator in the outer islands also received at the same time a plastic bag, his census forms, instruction books, a map of his district, ball point pens, a warrant card and a haversack.

The plastic bags and haversacks were widely used in the outer islands, for at many places it was necessary to wade ashore from a launch, or

use an outrigger canoe or ride the trail from one village to another.

Few people in Fiji realise the dif ficulties that have to be overcome in these out-of-the way places. But not one paper was lost or damaged by these enumerators, so don’t let anybody tell me that Fijians have not a sense of responsibility!

Census Day dawned. The Census Commissioner and his two assistants sat back with crossed fingers. The telephone rang, a shudder ran through us. What had gone wrong?

But it was the first report from a

District Officer—all goes well. A sigh of relief, and an extra cup of coffee!

The enumeration period lasted 10 days. A few minor requests—some more forms here, an extra enum erator there to cope with the district that had a greater density of dwel lings than we had estimated.

After the 10 days were up the Commissioner and his two assistants made a 10 per cent, check, on the spot, of as many districts as pos sible.

Once more it is some standing-up

It all goes into a computer

breakfasts, and wet clothes fron wading ashore—but the gods wen kind, for there was no rain, and then were smooth seas and calm nights.

Back at headquarters with all th« forms a team of women begin tc check and code the answers to th( questionnaire. They will go into z computer at a rate of 4,000 a week and this marvel of the modern age sorts out, adds, subtracts and pro vides for backroom boys who have to plan the future of Fiji develop ment for the next couple of decades What is the total population, the biggest towns; has family planning made itself felt; what has been hap pening to the death rate and to the marriage rate? One thing is certain, the income tax rate will never de crease!

Now that it is over, what are the thoughts of one closely connected with the census?

Probably my foremost thoughts are of the co-operation from every class, race and creed.

One begins to understand

Then I think of entering those many homes and beginning to under stand, just a little, about how a mother of six can keep them clean and tidy and reasonably healthy on £4 a week; or finding a house with 40 people in it, all from the one family. Of meeting Fiji’s oldest resident, a lady of 110 summers, a little shaky on her feet, but still with a clear brain.

And still other thoughts: How on earth would they take a coffin out of that house perched on the side of a cliff? Why are these people living in the middle of this swamp?

What conclusions after seeing all this does one come to? That the ordinary man in Fiji wants nothing so much as peace and quietness, a home of reasonable comfort, and a job of work to do, with a wage that will allow him to rear his family decently. And surely this is what he is justly entitled to.

Fiji has some way to go yet, but given the chance and a little help and understanding from her near neighbours she will attain a standard that will be the envy of larger and more industrial nations!

And the census will help record her progress.