Early census starts in Khanty-Mansi Area

TYUMEN, August 15 (Itar-Tass) -- Early census starts on Sunday in the
Khanty-Mansi Area /Yugra/. Residents of the Berezovsky District will be
the first to fill in the forms.
"It is possible to get there only by a helicopter or by boat," a
representative of the regional statistics service Valery Yarlov said.
"Everything is prepared for the census procedure there - the room, the
surveyors and the routes."
Over 100 settlements in the Khanty-Manski, Surgut, Nizhnevartovsk,
Oktyabrsk, Beloyarsk and Berezovsky districts are on the list for early
census.
Not only settlements are difficult to get to there. The surveyors will
go to reindeer farms, nomad camps, and trackwalkers' houses, too.
The national census will be conducted between the 14th and 25th of
October of the current year.
Native peoples in the region are the Khanty and the Mansi, known
collectively as Ob Ugric people. The general territory is historically
known as Yugra. The local languages, the Khanty language and the Mansi
language, enjoy special status in the area, while Russian is the only
official language there. The majority of oil produced in Russia comes from
the Khanty-Mansi Area, giving great economic importance to the region.