Peruvians kept indoors for census

President Garcia praised Peruvians for their co-operation

Peruvians had a very quiet day at home on Sunday - not because they wanted to but because they were told to.

President Alan Garcia called on people to stay indoors for 10 hours, saying a new national census was needed to correct data from a count in 2005.

Critics said the order was unconstitutional and the new census designed to mask government failures.

The census asked people about income, education levels, occupations, religion and marital status.

The Peruvian capital, Lima, a city of some eight million people, was the quietest it had been for years, the BBC's Dan Collyns reported.

The air was much cleaner than usual and you could hear the birds singing, with virtually no cars on the roads except for a few taxis, he said.

There were no sanctions for refusing to stay at home but police officers patrolled the streets to ask people to stay inside.

About 500,000 student volunteers were sent to people's homes to ask residents to spend half an hour filling out 64 questions ranging from marital status to religion.

'Failure'

The former director of the country's statistics institute, Farid Matuk, accused President Garcia of trying to invalidate the 2005 census for political reasons.

He told Reuters news agency he believed Mr Garcia was trying to cover up his failure to fulfil an electoral promise to slash poverty to 30% of the population by 2011.

Almost half the population of more than 27 million currently live below the poverty line.

Other critics said the order to stay home was unconstitutional and Lima's main business group said the country would lose millions of dollars with shops closed.

However, most Peruvians seem to have complied with the order to stay home.

Speaking on television, President Garcia said Peruvians had demonstrated great democratic values by collaborating with the data collectors.