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Statistically speaking, uncooperative respondents can count on facing fines: BPS chief
If you have closed the door on census officers or refused to answer their questions, you may need to change your attitude in the last 15 days they do their rounds
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f you have closed the door on census officers or refused to answer their questions, you may need to change your attitude in the last 15 days they do their rounds.
Central Statistics Agency (BPS) head Rusman Heriawan says the state may charge individuals refusing to cooperate with census field officers as some 10 percent citizens remained unaccounted for as of Monday, the official closing day of the 2010 national census.
Rusman said, quoting the 1997 Law on Statistics, that respondents - either individuals, households or companies - were obliged to provide information as requested by field officers, and could be punished if they refused to do so.
"There is an obligation here because the census is done for the sake of national interest," he told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
The statistics agency said one of the reasons it had failed to complete the census as scheduled was that it faced resistance from wealthy citizens in major cities who did not want the field officers to disrupt their privacy.
"They're still uncooperative although we have tried to compromise. Say, they don't want a face-to-face interview, we've compromised by providing a special booth on the ground floor of their apartment towers where they can take and return the survey forms, or by putting the forms in their mailboxes," he said.
In Medan, Pendi Dewanto, an official at BPS' North Sumatra branch, cited similar problems, saying many inhabitants of elite residences in the city refused to cooperate with the field officers.
"It's hard to make these groups understand. The field officers have visited them repeatedly only to be rejected.
"They don't want to be surveyed as long as it does not benefit them. Most of these elite groups refusing to be surveyed live in elite housing complexes," Pendi said.
Rusman said another group uncooperative with the census procedures are expatriates, who he said did not seem to understand that they were also subject to the census, which is based on an international convention.
Article 27 of the statistics law says, "Every respondent is obliged to provide information needed in basic survey conducted by the BPS."
Article 38 of the same law specifies the punishment: "Respondents who deliberately breach the regulation as mentioned in Article 27 are sentenced to a maximum of one year of imprisonment and a maximum fine of Rp 25 million *approximately US$2,700*."
Rusman said, however, that he would not immediately use legal approach to coerce difficult respondents to comply with the census, the result of which will be officially announced during the commemoration of Indonesia's 65th Independence Day on Aug. 17 by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
"We will probably *take legal measures* if we have time, considering we're still very busy *with the census* at the moment," he said.
Rusman said that, as of Monday, census officers had surveyed 90 percent of the country, reaching an estimated 228 million people.
Despite low enthusiasm from some groups, he said he was confident the survey would reach all Indonesian citizens and the result would also be credible.
