Human Affairs Minister the Hon. Jerome Dill said this will help Government to determine "if and where disparities exist and effectively put in place measures to deal with it''.

"The question of whether or not all racial groups are given equal opportunities in jobs has become a crucial issue in Bermuda and, without hard data to examine, it is difficult to deal with the issue realistically,'' Mr.

Dill said.

While the survey exercise will remain much the same, 4,000 employers and self-employed persons will be asked to list the race of their employees.

Firms will also need to gather race information from employees to include on the survey forms that the Statistics Department will mail out later this year.

Because of this, the Statistics Department will shortly provide employers with guidance on how to word the question and gather the information on race.

The Manpower Survey has also been transferred to the Statistics Department from the Labour and Home Affairs Ministry. And the categories used for race will be the same ones that the Statistics Department used for the 1991 Census: black, white, black and white, black and other, and other races.

In addition to this, the law under which the survey was administered -- the Statistics of Employment Act 1978 -- will be amended to include race.

Existing Human Rights legislation forbids discrimination in employment on the basis of race.

However, Mr. Dill said he felt that there was a need to develop an accurate picture of what the workplace was like in terms of race.

And, he said, the information collected in the survey will form a baseline as a point of reference.

Statistics on the Manpower Survey was the most efficient way to accomplish this, he added.

The recently released Household Expenditure Survey prepared by the Statistics Department showed that blacks earned less than whites, but gave little indication as to the jobs involved, Mr. Dill pointed out.

In addition to this, he said, the Household Expenditure Survey was carried out on a random sample of households. The Manpower Survey is designed to capture information on every job that is held.

Meetings have been held with the Bermuda Employers Council, the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce and unions to explain in detail the need to gather information on race, according to a Government statement sent out yesterday.

And it stressed that the information gathered will not identify "any particular business or individual''.

Mr. Dill said the Employers Council and his Ministry have been conducting a series of seminars to help employers become familiar with the problem of racial discrimination in the workplace and the implications of it.

So far, he added, employers have been very receptive to the seminars.

This, he said, could serve as a springboard for enlisting the employers' and employees' confidence and cooperation in answering the race question on the Manpower Survey.

The survey is conducted every year, using the week beginning on the first Sunday after Cup Match as a reference point. In addition to the race information, employers will submit returns on their employees, giving full names, date of birth, sex, occupation unit number, whether or not they are Bermudian and their hours of work.