Nobody asked for census results to organize aid for the affected!

The BiH Statistics Agency has not received a request from any institution to provide data from last year's population census for the purpose of organizing aid to victims of the catastrophic floods in BiH, it has been confirmed for the BiH news agency Patria (NAP) from that state institution.

Last year, BiH conducted a complete population census for the first time since 1991 and obtained updated data on the population after the devastating war from 1992 to 1995.

After the catastrophic floods that hit BiH last week, this data could be of great importance for organizing and planning aid delivery, but no one has requested it so far!

The BiH Statistics Agency says the reason for this is that "institutions have administrative records of the population in local communities."

According to them, the census results will not be published earlier either, despite the fact that they can be of exceptional importance for the reconstruction of areas devastated by floods.

- Data collected by the census of households and apartments in BiH are in the processing phase. According to the established plan, the first official census results, which the BiH Statistics Agency, in cooperation with the entity statistics bureaus, will process and publish at the end of this year or the beginning of next year, will be demographic: total population, gender and age structure of the population, down to the settlement level - stated the Agency to Patria.

When asked whether the census results will be relevant at all, considering the exchange of population movements and the disappearance of entire settlements in certain parts of the country, and the data from the BiH Council of Ministers that 950,000 people have been displaced from their homes, they say they will be.

- The census results will be relevant because, according to international statistical standards, the Census is a snapshot of the situation in the country at a specific moment defined as the critical or reference moment of the Census, which, according to the Law on the Census of Population, Households and Apartments in BiH in 2013, was September 30, 2013, at 24:00, i.e., at midnight between September 30 and October 1, 2013 - it was emphasized.

According to preliminary data from the population census, in the three cantons in FBiH most affected by the floods, Tuzla, Zenica-Doboj, and Posavina, there are 910,434 inhabitants and 287,711 households, Patria reports.

Data from the population census can provide authorities with insight into much detailed information about property status, number of employed, and other data that can be of crucial importance for the fair distribution of aid arriving in BiH.