By the Caribbean Journal staff

Montserrat’s Statistics Department released its first publication based on newly-collected census data, with the island’s population standing at 4,922.

Montserrat is the first in the OECS to release data, and plans tow more publications based on the information later this year, looking at income and the economy.

“Hundreds of persons across the island, appointed as enumerators, supervisors, editors, coders, data reviewers and data entry clerks, worked feverishly on the Census project,” said Cabinet Secretary Angela Greenaway.

According to Greenaway, 99 percent of persons who usually reside on Montserrat were fully enumerated in the census.

“We took advantage of the opportunity to shape our lives, as a people of Montserrat,” she said.

The data was collected over the past 10 months. For the first time, the electronic data cleaning and the production of the final Census dataset were completed by the staff in the department, supervised by a consultant from the United Nations Population Fund.

The top three population centres in Montserrat are Look Out, Brades and St Peters, according to the census, with 7 of every 10 persons who usually reside in Montserrat being Montserrat citizens.