After the meeting which lasted for almost 4 long hours, representatives of the Agency for Statistics of BiH, Federal Bureau for Statistics and the Republika Srpska Institute of Statistics failed to find a solution that would open the doors to the publication of the census results that was performed in 2013.
“At today’s meeting we did not reach the agreement on unified methodology on residents. Unfortunately, we talked about the same issues on which we cannot reach the agreement and the result is that we have not reached it yet. We will introduce the Council of Ministers of BiH with this, and we still need to reach the arrangement and find common solutions in order for census results to be published,” said the director of the Agency for Statistics of BiH, Velimir Jukic, adding that after this session about 196,000 questionnaires are disputable, but there is still a chance for the publication of the census.
However, after this meeting, it became clear that additional 70,000 questionnaires are disputable because of proposals from RS related to the issue of the so-called “using deterministics”. To recall, about 120,000 questionnaires were disputable so far.
“We had three proposals. One is the proposal of the Agency for Statistics, the second proposal is the proposal of Republika Srpska Institute of Statistics, which is not new, it is our same proposal that is now submitted formally. The third came from the proposal of the Deputy Director of the Agency of Statistics, which is compatible with the program of the Republika Srpska Institute of Statistics. I am disappointed that we have not made room for convergence of views and that is something that certainly is not good, “said Radmila Cickovic, Director of the Republika Srpska Institute of Statistics.
According to Cickovic, deterministics refers to the seven questions to which there is no answer or where answers are not consistent.
The director of the Federal Bureau for Statistics Emir Kremic said that the Federal Bureau cannot respond to the proposal referred from RS because it would be outside of its jurisdiction. However, the Federal Bureau will give full support to the state Agency.
“The thing that I can say is that both entity institutes believe that the Agency for Statistics of BiH, in accordance with its competence, should establish the methodology. It is on the Agency now to establish it, in accordance with the laws and recommendations,” said Kremic.
Because of the absence of consent, the Central Census Bureau repeatedly failed to resolve the issue of the part of questionnaires that are related to non-resident or resident population.
The legal deadline by which census results have to be published is the 1st of July 2016.
To recall, Denis Zvizdic, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of BiH, and Adil Osmanovic, Minister of Civil Affairs and coordinator of the census question, last week requested that the Agency for Statistics of BiH immediately adopts the necessary methodology for processing of census data, in accordance with the Law on census and recommendations of international experts.
(Source: I. P./Klix.ba)
