Around noon this Saturday, the meeting to set the date for the population and housing census in the Bolivian province of Santa Cruz, the origin of the «civic» strike called by the opposition against the government of Luis Arce, began.
The appointment has been in Trinidad after an attendance control without cell phones and with the presence of international guests who expressed their desire that the meeting reaches an agreed decision, reports the Bolivian newspaper ‘Página Siete’.
The meeting was attended by the Minister of Planning, Sergio Cusicanqui, and began with a presentation by the director of censuses and surveys of the National Institute of Statistics (INE), Martha Oviedo.
«It is going to be a space to listen to each other. We are going to listen to the proposals and in this way we are all going to be aware of the proposals that we have and later we are going to review the census process, and then build the program», said Cusicanqui.
Earlier, the representative of the United Nations Population Fund, Rolando Pardo, took the floor and thanked for the invitation and pledged all the support of this institution to achieve the best possible agreement.
«We would like to thank you for your confidence, we want to contribute with a small grain of sand to a solution (…). We place our experience at your full disposal. I reiterate the value of this instance to be able to reach a solution», he pointed out.
The director of the Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Center (CELADE) of the Population Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Simone Cecchini, coincided in expressing his hope that the technical meeting that began working «for time and matter» will define a program and a date by consensus and that it will guarantee that the census will include all Bolivians. However, he said that the decision is in the hands of Bolivians.
«We, from international organizations, accompany this process. The census is in the hands of you Bolivians, particularly the National Institute of Statistics (INE) which is the institution leading the census process. I hope that in this dialogue INE can inform you of the progress and challenges regarding the census process,» he said.
The requirement that attendees should not enter with cell phones has generated some discomfort. The rector of the Gabriel René Moreno Autonomous University, Vicente Cuéllar, has condemned this on Facebook. «THEY KIDNAP OUR CELL PHONES! The same as always. They take our cell phones to enter the meeting. The attendees are lining up to register and hand in their mobile devices. We want the presentations of the technical proposals to be of public knowledge, the Bolivian people want to know them, it is their right and also ours to keep them informed,» he wrote.
The so-called «civic movement» of Bolivia started last October 22 an indefinite national strike to demand the celebration of the Census in 2023, instead of 2024 as proposed by the Bolivian Government, since this registration conditions the distribution of aid among the regions of the country.
The protests are concentrated in the city of Santa Cruz, where the opposition to Luis Arce has the greatest weight and is the economic engine of the country, where one person has lost his life during the mobilizations.
