ENG-1961 — Page 38

REVIEW

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or harbour was photographed, usually from a helicopter, and the number of boats in the photograph compared with the number recorded on the surface.

Still, people do move house-as already stated about thirteen hundred people move every day. When that happens mistakes may be caused by persons either being counted in two places or omitted in two places. Each one of the 13,233 persons known to have moved house during the ten-day enumeration period had to be traced to his new address, which was successfully done in all but 2,940 cases. And for 2,314 of these full details had already been recorded before they moved house, so that the number 'lost without trace' was only 626.

There is good reason to believe that very few people were in fact missed. The factor of public co-operation was high. Boats coming into harbour came to the census launches without waiting to be hailed. In rural areas, perhaps from some confusion between the census and the issue of fresh identity cards, people from isolated villages walked miles to the nearest census post to make sure they weren't omitted (this resulted at first in some duplication). And finally on census day itself and for ten days afterward over a thousand telephone calls were made to census headquarters by people who said they had not been visited. Every such report was investigated and, if necessary, the address given revisited. Most proved to have been already included; the details evidently having been supplied by another member of the family. A very small number were hoaxers giving false addresses or the addresses of prominent people. About two hundred omissions were found and rectified, and where known, the reason for the omission recorded for future guidance.

A modern census is usually preceded by a test or pilot census and this course was very necessary in Hong Kong where there had been no census for thirty years. The pilot censuses, which were sample surveys of the whole population, the details of which are too technical for inclusion in this Chapter, helped to train the staff and to make the public aware of what a census really involved. About one boat in forty was concerned in the pilot marine census held at Lunar New Year 1960; and about one household in fifty