The meeting will decide on the actions required for the successful piloting of the LFS, taking into consideration other demands being placed on the respective OECS Statistics Departments, including the 2010 round of population and housing censuses.

Programme Officer at the OECS Secretariat Sean Curtis Mathurin, says that the St. Georges’ meeting with OECS Directors of Statistics will consider a range of issues which are pertinent to the successful execution of the Labour Force Survey: “Institutional issues; harmonization of concepts, definitions and measurement procedures; funding and sustainability issues; implementation schedule and dissemination of results are some of the main subject matters to be discussed”

The meeting in Grenada has received financial backing from the World Bank Trust Fund for Statistical Capacity Building grant facility.

The upcoming meeting follows a recent and successful OECS seminar on Sampling for Labour Force Surveys, which looked at the practical application of labour force sampling methodologies and techniques.

The pending meeting of OECS Directors of Statistics in early February will be a vital step in establishing an OECS Labour Market Information Systems (LMIS).

The OECS Labour Market Information System will be an essential element of the framework for monitoring of the OECS Economic Union, in particular the functioning of the OECS as a single integrated market.