Official praises Russians' responsible attitude to census.

 
MOSCOW, October 23 (Itar-Tass) - Population of Russia showed the presence of civic responsibility during the national census that lasted from October 9 through October 21, Vladimir Sokolin, deputy chairman of Russia's State Committee for Statistics, said Wednesday as he summed up the early results of the nationwide effort to take count of the people living on Russian territory.

A sociological poll suggests that 93 percent of the population have taken part in the census, Sokolin said.

He believes the federal law on census should be amended with a view to making participation in censuses mandatory for all people living in the country.

Sokolin admitted that organizers of national censuses faced problems in all countries. "Work with the population is becoming a hard thing to do, especially in the industrialized countries," he said.

The UN plans to organize a special symposium next year to discuss the problems of census-taking in the future, Sokolin said.

All the data the census-takers gathered during the campaign will require serious processing, and exact data on the country's population is unlikely to appear earlier than the spring of 2003, he said.

Manipulations with that data will be impossible, and nobody will be able to acquire the databases with the names of and personal information on people at whatever markets, Sokolin said in bid to dispel certain popular rumors and media assertions on the issue.

The census in Chechnya was undisturbed enough, he said, confirming at the same time there had been instances of some procedural violations, when the officials filled out the registration forms with pencils.

Those instances were single, though, and the government acted tough to eradicate them, Sokolin noted.

The processed results of the census will certainly confirm there has been no demographic explosion in the country, as the mortality rate is generally high, birthrate is low and the population is getting older, he indicated.

The government expended 5.1 billion rubles from Russia's federal budget for the census, Sokolin said. He is expected to report on the early results of the campaign at a meeting of the cabinet of ministers November 14.