The State Statistical Office maintains the position that the census is a statistical operation and will conduct it in that way. We are aware that there will be political pressure, but it is up to us whether we will be able to resist. We are firmly determined to persevere in this and this operation to be really only statistical, SSO head Apostol Simovski.

He says that the SSO’s task is to collect accurate and quality data and that it will do that, and how that data will be further treated, he stressed, does not depend on them.

Simovski reiterated that the census will be conducted according to all standards.

Unlike the 2002 and 2011 census, added Simovski, the current one includes our citizens who have been abroad for more than a year, because we believe that the state has a huge interest to know the number of citizens who are abroad, what is their structure on all grounds, when they left the country in which directions and in what time period they left the country. I am not completely sure that the exact number can be found out, he said, but these data can provide a basis for estimating the overall number.

Regarding the citizens abroad, he said that someone close to them will be able to give data, and extreme care will be taken who gives the data and how they give it. It is not by chance, Simovski emphasizes, the person who gives the data for another person gives his ID number as well because he will bear responsibility if he tries to give false data.