Primorje-Gorski Kotar County Prefect Zlatko Komadina said on Monday at a news conference in Rijeka that the county census-taking commission had established that a mistake made by an enumerator in the municipality of Viskovo had been rectified on 1 April, and before the mistake had been reported, and that the commission had not established that the error had been made intentionally.
In response to reporters' questions, Komadina said that the enumerator had correctly put down in the census questionnaire the ethnicity and the language of the person, but a mistake occurred "due to a lack of knowledge of the religion category" and that mistake was corrected two hour later after the enumerator came back to that person and rectified the error.
The case should have been reported to the census-taking centre in Viskovo rather than reporting it first to Milorad Pupovac, a Croatian Serb leader and parliamentarian. Pupovac informed the public about the case but "this should not be done that way", said Komadina, who is also the county census-taking commission head.
According to Komadina, the enumerator in question and his instructor and supervisor and the head of the Viskovo census-taking centre presented reports on this case and only the person whose rights might have been violated has not yet given statements in the public. It is politicians who draw public attention to it, Komadina said.
The commission will establish the facts relevant to the case in the coming three days, after which the Central Bureau of Statistics (DSZ) will make decisions on the enumerator and the supervisor from Viskovo, Komadina said, adding that the census-taking commission would not be "a court-martial" as long as he was at its helm.
The DZS confirmed to press on Sunday afternoon that several irregularities had been identified in the process of census taking in the village of Smilcic and in Viskovo municipality, adding that the census takers responsible for the irregularities had been fired and that their supervisors had been suspended until their possible responsibility was established.
Officials at the DZS said they were confident the reported irregularities were due to ignorance and not some other reason.
The DZS apologised to the interviewed citizens as soon as the irregularity was reported, annulled the census forms and repeated the census taking procedure, DZS officials said.
As for Viskovo, the DSZ said that only one case was reported and that the irregularity was removed. "We believe that there was no ill intent, just ignorance, because the ethnicity and language were written down correctly," it said, adding that it was also looking into an irregularity reported in Borovo Naselje near Vukovar.
The statistics office dismissed claims by Serb National Council (SNV) president Pupovac, who said that mistakes were made in the very making of the census form, which, he said, despite suggestions from EUROSTAT, did not contain all the necessary options on one's ethnicity, religion and language.
"The questionnaires are entirely in line with international rules and regulations of the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, and that is not the reason for the reported irregularities," the DZS said.
