top statistician last week branded their method "inaccurate''.

And Shadow Finance Minister Grant Gibbons said he feared the Progressive Labour Party Government was using the issue as a "Trojan horse'' to secretly wheel unemployment insurance into the public arena.

"I believe it is in the PLP's political interest to have a high number of unemployed, so if there's a move to a different measure we have to make sure it isn't simply a ploy to justify unemployment insurance,'' he said.

"That would be a significant burden on both small and large businesses at a time when they are already about to absorb the cost of a national pension scheme.'' But Finance Minister Eugene Cox dismissed Mr. Gibbons' claim as "arrant nonsense'' and a "red herring'' attempt to hide the lack of effort made in the past in finding out how many Bermudians were unemployed.

He said unemployment insurance had nothing to do with the issue at hand.

"All I am saying is we need the statistics to be as accurate as we can get them so we have the information to allow us to make good decisions. The flawed figures not only misled the public but they also mean the Government couldn't make decisions based on the true facts of the issue.'' The Royal Gazette reported that Chief Government Statistician Janet Smith Bradshaw said an accurate measure of Bermuda's unemployed people had not been carried out since a survey of 750 households in 1993.

She said it was impossible to say what the current jobless rate was, but in 1993, and in the 1991 census, it was measured at six percent.

A meeting has been set up between Ms Smith Bradshaw and Mr. Cox to see if a regular survey of a sample of households can be done to track the true rate.

But Dr. Gibbons argued last night that measuring the number of jobless citizens was "tricky'' and countries relied on different methods with none completely "right or wrong''.

He said the 1991 census and the 1993 survey which both pegged unemployment at six percent were done during a recession.

And his Government had always made it quite clear when they quoted unemployment rates of around 1.5 percent that it was only a measure of those people registered with the Government.

But he admitted it was a "weakness'' in the system that people did not always register with the Government.