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Crimea and Sevastopol

Crimea holding first census after reunification with Russia

Officials fill out a form on each resident containing thirty-three questions like the exact address, family status, ethnic identity, and level of income

© ITAR-TASS/Denis Rusinov

SIMFEROPOL, October 14. /ITAR-TASS/. A regional census that will last through to October 25 begins in the Crimean Federal District on Tuesday. It is the first census after the Republic of Crimea reunited with Russia in March this year.

The census officials will fill out a form on each resident containing thirty-three questions like the exact address, family status, ethnic identity, and level of income.

Also, there is a separate form on the housing the residents live in. A special questionnaire has been issued for the people with provisional residence permits. The questions will reflect the purpose of the visit and the duration of sojourn.

Respondents will take independent decisions on whether or not to answer all these questions, Yelena Tvirovich, an official at the Crimean Statistics Service told reporters.

“We won’t demand passports and will fill out these forms with full reliance on the answers given by respondents,” she said.

Remzi Ilyasov, a deputy chairman of Crimea’s State Council, said one of the main objectives of the census is to establish the number and size of ethnic groups residing in Crimea.

“Crimea is a region where it’s vitally important to take account of the size of one or another ethnic group,” he said. “This is necessary for the solution of social, economic, language, and religious problems.”

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said October 3 the census was necessary for drawing up a programme of development for the Crimean Peninsula.

A total of 8,000 officials will take part in the census in the Republic of Crimea and more than 1,500, in the federal city of Sevastopol. Also, the Crimeans will have an opportunity to answer the pollsters’ questions at special stations.

Each official engaged in the census will get remuneration of 13,200 rubles ($ 326) for his or her work.

All in all, the federal authorities have allocated 387 million rubles ($ 9.5 million) for the census.

The previous time a census was held in Crimea, then an autonomous region of Ukraine, was in 2001. It showed that some 2.34 million people were residing in the peninsula.

The data provided by the Crimean Statistics Service suggests that the strength of the permanent population has reduced since then, as 1.96 million people were living in Crimea on June 1, 2014. The breakdown was 1.3 million city dwellers /62.2%/ and 0.7 million rural residents (37.7%).

In terms of the size of the population, the Republic of Crimea occupies the 26th ranking in Russia.

Sevastopol’s statistics bureau said the federal city, which is also the location of the main base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, had 385,000 residents on August 1, 2014.

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Crimea and Sevastopol

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