Yekaterinburg residents boycott Russian census over lack of heating

[Presenter] The first day of the national census that started in Russia on 9  October has brought unexpected results. A large number of Russians refuse to take part in the action.

Some 200 families are not allowing census enumerators into their homes in Ulyanovsk. They are demanding that the heat and water supply in the city be fixed. Yekaterinburg faces similar problems. Our correspondent Vladimir Antipin has the details.

[Correspondent] Tatyana Aleksandrovna believes that boycotting the censuses her last chance to attract the authorities' attention to municipal problems. This house still has no heating. Two or even three families live now in each flat. They say it is easier to get warm this way.

They have to go to neighbouring houses to fetch water. They heat it on electric stoves. Residents say that the authorities have simply forgotten about them.

[Unidentified woman] The central heating radiator is cold as ice. All the rooms are the same.

[Correspondent] Residents of several residential districts in Yekaterinburg, Alapayevsk and Nizhniy Tagil have refused to let census enumerators into their flats today. In the settlement of Beloyarskiy on the eve of the census, unidentified persons distributed leaflets calling for people to boycott it for as long as there is no heat in homes.

[Second unidentified woman] They think we do not exist. If we do not exist, we shall not take part in the census. We are sick and tired of all that.

[Correspondent] Enumerators say that they do not have any right to force people to take part in the action. The only thing they can do is to try to persuade the refuseniks to change their mind.

[Aleksey Chernyadev, chairman of the Sverdlovsk Region Statistics Committee] In my home, the radiator in the hallway has been warm since Friday [5 October], and the rest of radiators are cold. What should I say? There are certain difficulties here. However, they should not affect the census in any way.

[Correspondent] The regional Statistics Committee is placing hope in the municipal services. The sooner Yekaterinburg flats are warm, the more precise the census results will be. Census enumerators say that the main event of the year depends on plumbers' efficiency now.

[Video shows residents warming up in their flats using electric heaters and showing that there is no tap water running; a small rally in front of a block of flats]