Law Commission approves “the census”

The minister Genc Pollo insisted that this is not a process that changes the personal data in the civil registry of the Albanian citizens, but a process that first of all gives to the Albanian institutions a clearer view on the population and its social status, which have changed a lot after the last registration made in 2001.

“We have a bunch of different data, and we are not able to pick the most credible one, the real one. The Census gives a right answer to this problem. For better determining public investments, its distribution in districts, the Census gives a very good base of the population status, their residences, in all local units. It accumulates data for many other criteria, because population registration is not the only one. The Census collects data on personal revenues, on the revenues of the economic and family units. Each commune, municipality and district will have an indicator of the social status, of richness and poverty”, Pollo declared.

Mr. Pollo explained that the difference between population registration and the Census, or the population data collection, consists in guarding the anonymity and changing individual data every 10 years, when the Census is performed.

“It is important to underline that this process is not a registration. If you are registered in a Registrar Office, your data will not change. The name, surname, birthplace and birthday will remain the same. This is the core of the word “registration” and it is completely inadequate to be used in other activities, in other types of data collections, which has as a final product the anonymity”, Pollo declared.

By explaining that the word census is present in the Albanian dictionary, in the sense of data collection, Minister Pollo indirectly accused of public manipulation the Vice Chairman of the High Council of Justice, Kreshnik Spahiu, who opposed auto-declarations of religion and ethnicity.

“The Census has no connection with the ethnic or religious registration, as some charlatans have chosen to pretend, who have made a mess with their own jobs and today want to spread their pollution everywhere. This word has the Albanian lexical background, but it is used for giving a special real sense, and for avoiding misunderstandings”, Pollo declared.

However, for preventing any kind of fake declarations, the changes proposed by law provide fines for persons who give correct data. The process of the census, of data collection by the population is expected to start this autumn and according to Minister Pollo it fulfills all EU legislation standards.

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