The Romanian Statistics Institute (INS) has recommended people who live in Bucharest, who were not contacted by a census operator, to fill in the census questionnaire by themselves, online. The census should end on October 31, at the beginning of next week.

“In order to increase the data recording in order to finish the census for all individuals and houses until October 31, the Central Technical Secretariat of the Central Commission for Population and Housing Census 2011, recommends people living in Bucharest, who couldn’t be contacted by a census operator, to fill in the questionnaires themselves”, according to INS.

This method will be available on www.recensamantromania.ro, “Toolkit” (Instrumentar) section, starting Friday, October 28, 2011, at 12:00 hours. The website is also available in English.

A confusion related to whether Romanians have to declare their people’s personal numeric code (CNP) or not during the ongoing census in the country has  triggered reactions from the media and caused a first dismissal at the Statistics Institute. Vladimir Alexandrescu, the National Statistics Institute (INS) spokesman, has been recently dismissed after saying it was not mandatory to declare the personal numeric number (CNP). The INS head, Vergil Voineagu, said Wednesday this week that the CNP must be declared. The census operators will return to the people that didn’t declare their CNP and those who refuse to declare it will be fined.

The Romanian census operators will record people with foreign citizenship who have permanent or temporary residence in Romania, but they will not record data on individuals with foreign citizenship employed by diplomatic missions and consulates or by international organizations. Members of personnel of foreign armies, commercial naval and air fleet, and press correspondents located in the country who are in Romania at the time of the census will also not be recorded.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com

(photo source: Sxc.hu)