The Union of Poles of Lithuania is preparing a census of the population of the Polish national minority

The census will be carried out electronically, by telephone and directly, and the organizers assure that compliance with the quarantine restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic will be respected.

“The Union of Lithuanian Poles is announcing a census of citizens, this campaign is parallel to the general census of the Lithuanian population. We are announcing the initiative so that we can mobilize our population, pay attention to the fact that the identity of a person and nationality registration is very important, ”Edita Tamošiūnaitė, vice president of the Union of Lithuanian Poles in Vilnius, said at a press conference in the Seimas on Tuesday.

According to her, the available data will allow the community to define and forecast more precisely the needs of kindergartens, schools and cultural activities of national minorities. The data collected is intended to be stored for 25 years.

“The data will be stored for 25 years, we can do a comparative analysis and see the real numbers. Looking at Vilnius County and the 2011 general census data, we see that about 2 percent. people have not declared their nationality. It can be assumed that they are residents of national minorities who do not indicate their nationality, ”said E. Tamošiūnaitė.

Valdemaras Tomaševskis, MEP, head of the Polish Lithuanian Election Campaign – Union of Christian Families, noted that the Polish Lithuanian Union, which is preparing the census, is the largest organization that unites the Polish national minority, with about 12,000 members. members, 12 chapters.

Valdemaras Urbanas, coordinator of the census, affirmed that the census will be carried out in compliance with both the personal data protection and quarantine requirements.

“People will fill out the questionnaires on a voluntary basis and will also agree that the legal entity, ie the Polish Union of Lithuania, will also process the data for a specified period of time. The Polish Union will collect the data for a single exclusive purpose: comparative analysis. The enumerators will have a distinctive feature, a clearly visible enumerator certificate, they will be duly instructed to work with personal data ”, said V. Urbanas.

According to him, the census will begin in the near future, “all the recommendations of epidemiologists will be followed, as well as all government decisions and all the requirements will be observed during the quarantine.”

“There will be three ways to conduct the census: the first will be a paper questionnaire form, the second will be an electronic questionnaire form, and the third option will be to complete that questionnaire over the phone and then sign it. We think that the quarantine will not last forever, we do not have the goal of doing this census in a very short time, a month, for example, we think it will be possible to do it longer, because the effort and resources will be human and financial “, said the coordinator.

In January, the Department of Statistics launched a statistical survey on the nationality, mother tongue and religion of the population. A general census is also carried out, but it is carried out based on the data available to the state, administrative sources and enumerators no longer visit the population.

According to data from the 2011 Population and Housing Census carried out by the Department of Statistics, 84.2%. of the total Lithuanian population were Lithuanians, 6.6%. – Poles, 5.8 percent. – Russians, 1.2 percent. – Belarusians, 0.5 percent. – Ukrainians, 0.6 percent. – residents of other nationalities.

According to data from July 1, almost 83 thousand people live in Lithuania. foreigners: this represents almost 3%. population of the country.