THE PROJECT
Caribbean Development Bank working in collaboration with the Governments of Antigua & Barbuda and St. Lucia has embarked on an Assessment of living conditions project.

The KAIRI CONSULTANCY Ltd of Trinidad and Tobago is the consultants contracted by CDB to work on the projects.

COORDINATION

Ministry of Housing, Culture and Social Transformation are spearheading the initiative.

Based on CDB's criteria, a multi-sectoral team, the national assessment team (NAT) was appointed, headed by a national coordinator-Mrs. Almira Henry.

The National Coordinator heads the country team, and work closely with the Consultants in planning and coordinating the Assessment. In addition, assist with the preparation of the Report and subsequent formulation of a poverty reduction programme for the country.

This team is further divided into subcommittees. This is to ensure the successful mounting of the Project and overall management of the process.

COMPONENTS:
Training Workshops; Household Budgetary Survey (HBS) and Survey of Living Conditions (SLC) and data processing; PPA; & Institutional Analysis

TARGET GROUP:
1200 households from 17 enumeration/districts, upper income bracket; middle and lower income bracket.

BASIS FOR ANALYSIS
Not withstanding the targeted information gathering on poor persons within the communities, Antigua and Barbuda unlike other countries in the region did not benefit from a Country wide Poverty Assessment (CPA) or an Assessment of Living Conditions. Therefore the initiative is timely and provides an opportunity to gather empirical data on status of individuals in society; as an important indicator of a country's level of development it is imperative to know the number of individuals who are poor.

Such research based information will also assist a country to measure accurately where it is in terms of meeting the Millennium Development Goals, and in particular Goal 1 in respect of eradicating poverty.

This type of information is utilized by donor agencies as the basis upon which to justify development assistance. Moreover, the absence of such critical data has impeded proper planning, formulation of social policies and appropriate programmes and legislations to improve the lives of people.

The initiative will be launched by mounting a national survey of living conditions and the Household Budgetary survey, to assess the socio-economic situation of persons.

EXPECTED OUTCOME
The project seeks to accomplish several objectives; such as:

• Outline Antigua & Barbuda's progress towards the MDGs
• Highlight priority social areas and address urgent deficiencies in social development programmes
• Establish creation of a possible way forward to ensure high standard & quality of life for everyone
• Valuable data for an assessment of the impact of socio-economic policies on the conditions and levels of living households
• Information on the poor, their characteristics & expenditure patters
• Information to assess the cost of the provision and expenditure of households on education and the level of satisfaction of the population with what is provided

LATEST INFORMATION-

St. John's, Antigua, 31st January…An additional forty person are being trained to help speed up the field interviews that form part of the Survey of Living Conditions and the Household Budgetary Survey.

So states Coordinator of the National Assessment Team, Mrs. Almira Henry.

"The training will expedite the project by meeting the completion date (February month end) so that data processing can commence in March" Henry outlined.

Henry further said that the additional forty persons will complement the additional thirty-three on roll.

St. John's, Antigua, 21st February 2006…Officials heading the country's first ever Survey of Living Condition/Country Poverty Assessment have indicated that the survey will continue into March.

Communications Officer within the Ministry of Housing, Culture & Social Transformation, Collin Jno-Finn, said that the National Assessment Team (NAT) was hoping to wrap up all field exercises at the end of February however circumstances have altered their plans.

"Since our last re-enforce media drive the responses from the public have been overwhelming, however since the field evaluators have received several notice of cancelled and rescheduled appointments this has left us with no choice but to extend into March."

Jno-Finn said he does not foresee that this will greatly affect the final outcome of the results of the survey, but will greatly improve the overall quality of the survey.

Unfortunately the community sessions are coming along quite well but we would appeal to some communities to lend their support to the exercise as this will benefit the future development of the residents there.

For more information contact:

Almira Henry
Project Coordinator
Ministry of Housing, Culture & Social Transformation
(268) 562-5533

OR

Collin Jno-Finn
Communications Officer
Ministry of Housing, Culture & Social Transformation
Dickenson Bay Street
St. John's, Antigua
(268) 771 4006/562-5698
colllin.jno-finn@antigua.gov.ag