Some 50 households refused to cooperate with the 2010 Census in violation of the law.But it turns out that Government’s bark is worse than its bite as it has no plans to take any legal action against them.“Government has not formed any plan to prosecute persons who did not cooperate with the census takers during the 2010 Census,” said Cabinet Secretary Donald Scott.“The public interest has been served by the cooperation of the majority of householders who took their civic responsibilities seriously and provided the required information to census takers. There is nothing to be gained by prosecuting the few who refused to cooperate. The usefulness of the census information will be demonstrated many times over as the details are released and will be persuasive in its own right on the merits of cooperating in future with census exercises.”During the initial phase of the Census, the Statistics Department said almost 100 households had refused to provide information.As a result, the Department warned the public that failing to comply to the Census was an offence carrying a fine of up to $1,000.On the final day of the Census, March 31 this year, the Department warned that those who refused, some of whom had abused the workers, would have to “bear the consequences”.Census workers have told this newspaper that they were racially abused and threatened while they were attempting to collect information.Flanked by senior officials of the Department of Statistics, Premier Paula Cox released preliminary Census results last week. She noted that the response rate of 92 percent was respectable compared to other jurisdictions.Some 3,300 households were not enumerated, Statistics Department director Valerie Robinson James told The Royal Gazette immediately following the Premier’s press conference.“After close investigation, we can say with a level of confidence that these addresses comprise the majority of vacant dwellings and vacation homes,” she said. “There are however a nominal amount of households in this total that would have been occupied.”That “nominal amount” happens to be 50, one official revealed. But it is one statistic that the Department of Statistics does not want to release officially.The director said that, during the Census taking, it was noted that the response rate was low.“When we realised that the Census coverage was low during the latter part of 2010, we took the opportunity to use the Statistics Act and advise people of their legal responsibility to participate in the 2010 Census,” she said.“In an effort to increase the response rate, the Statistics Act can be used in two ways as policy and as law. At that time to increase the Census response rate, we decided to use the Act as policy and not law, to advise the general public of the possible consequences if they did not comply. As a result of informing the public, the number of refusals that we had documented dwindled considerably.”Government also expanded the means by which persons could be interviewed by telephone, walk-in on certain days during the week and even opened up the Statistics Department on a Saturday for interviews.In the end, data was collected from about 27,000 households.