Top persons in the public sector and members of the Poverty Assessment Team in Anguilla began attending a workshop, on Monday, organised by the Statistical Department at the Community College Development Unit.

Participants in the workshop

Chief Statistician, Lori-Anne Alleyne-Franklin, introduced two of the Caribbean Development Bank consultants working with her department on various components of the assessment project: Dr. Ralph Henry and Dr. Fredricka Dear.

Speaking at a press briefing before the commencement of the workshop, Dr. Henry outlined various matters related to poverty assessment. “This exercise is quite all-embracing. It’s deep and it’s wide,” he stated. “The study consists of four components. There is a survey of living conditions. That consists of a sample survey of a little more than 480 households in Anguilla selected randomly. It means that while it is a poverty assessment, we are not going out looking for poor people. We take a sample and within that, using a certain methodology, we will be able to establish ... what percentage of the population is poor or poorer… and what groups are hurting under the economic and social measures that are in place.”

Lori-Anne Alleyne-Franklin, Dr. Henry and Dr. Dear

The assessment exercise is being handled largely by the Statistics Department through a number of enumerators collecting the relevant information. According to Dr. Henry, the survey is also aimed at updating the island’s cost of living index.

The second component is the participatory assessment involving focus group discussions with households on what may be the real issues of concern and how they think various matters are impacting on them. The third component of the assessment involves issues of environment such as problems of coastal erosion, sea rise, hurricanes, climate change and issues of health and what can be done to maintain a certain quality of life.

The fourth area of the assessment relates to economic and social issues. “There is a macro of Anguilla. It is a small country but with a dynamic economy and that dynamism comes not solely from what you do here, but from the impact of things happening on the outside,” Dr. Henry said. He referred to tourism and the offshore finance sectors in Anguilla which are dependent on what happens in the international markets and the impact that those markets are having on Anguilla as they determine the levels of income and qualities of life among households and individuals.

According to Dr. Henry, the study is being undertaken and structured in such a way that later on Anguilla, through the Statistical Department and various groups and individuals, would have the capacity to handle its own poverty assessment work or statistical business without outside assistance.

Dr. Dear explained that the statistical information collected so far was now part of the island’s base line. “Along with any additional information you may collect you can now use this to say whether things are getting better or worse,” she said. “The information gives you a lot of facts about your communities which Community Development Officers, Social Workers and NGOs, can use on a day to day basis. I think it is important for all of us to have profiles of our communities as it helps to build that data base of information that you can have.”

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