Tetovo, 6 September 2021 (MIA) – We had an issue with the Internet connection, not with the census application service itself but the entire Internet network in the country. To my knowledge, Telekom is working on the issue, and I believe it will soon be removed so that the process continues without a problem, State Statistical Office (SSO) director Apostol Simovski said Monday. Simovski visited Tetovo on Monday alongside SSO deputy director Ilmi Selami to check the census process in this region. According to them, the door-to-door effort of census takers even during the working hours on Monday is largely successful, with an obstacle being the issue of Internet connection interruptions, as in the rest of the country. According to Simovski, the population largely takes part in the census, with only a small number of people rejecting the census takers and a very few incidents, which he expects to be overcome. “I think this process will be successfully completed in the end, and we’ll all be happy at the end of September that we have wrapped up this process after 20 years,” said Simovski. In Tetovo, as well as in the whole country, the census lacks about fifty census workers. Therefore, people employed in the administration have been hired, with training to be provided for them over the next few days so that they can start work and join the process very soon. “So far, I have no information that any of the households have asked for any specific protocols or anything else. What I do know is that all our census workers have an obligation and strictly adhere to the measures in place for the protection of the population. We have to take care of our citizens and take care of ourselves, too. And absolutely no one is an exception. We must all observe these measures. If any of the census workers has health issues, they can’t be part of this process because they have to be placed in isolation. The process is running for us, we cannot wait for anyone to come out of isolation, but we have no such issues at the moment,” Simovski said. Commenting on the first day of the census, he said it was an extremely successful day, with over 92,000 persons counted.