Census operation conducted as expected, says Simovski
Skopje, 16 September 2021 (MIA) – The course of the census is as expected, even a little better than expected. On workdays, the daily average is around 100,000 people, with a slight increase over the weekends. We’re expecting next weekend to be even better, said the director of the State Statistical Office, Apostol Simovski, for "Morning Briefing" show on Thursday.
The fact of the matter is that the population is accepting this operation on a large scale, and all attempts to boycott the census and cause it to fail will be futile, Simovski said.
“Our website has been getting attacked since the census started, but it has nothing to do with it. It’s not software issues, it’s millions of constant attacks throughout these past days. The census system was also attacked twice, but both attacks were successfully repelled, and there haven’t been any more incidents like it,” Simovski said.
He also said that there are certain structures who are opposing the census.
“I don’t understand why. If it’s a fight for power or whatever that will destroy the country, then what’s this power good for? It’s obvious that such structures exist, and maybe they have some involvement in this section, but I don’t know and I don’t want to speculate,” Simovski said.
In regards to the information about the number of citizens declaring themselves as Bulgarians, he stated that no one has access to the database in order for such information to even exist.
“It’s sheer nonsense, it doesn’t even deserve commentary. No one has seen the census data, not a single soul. The whole system is protected against any breaches, even from our employees,” noted the head of the national statistical office.
Simovski said that the data will be available once the census and the overall processing ends.