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About 4 million people in Azerbaijan do not live there where they are registered in and no one knows how many more people have left to work abroad, reports International TV and Radio Company "MIR24".

Correspondent of "MIR 24" channel Khayal Yusibzade noted that the Azerbaijani authorities have come to the conclusion that "almost the half of the population does not live at the place of registration."

"In addition, there is no precise data even about those who left the country. All this brings to serious problems, to the increase of the amount of the unpaid alimony, unpaid fines and bills, in particular," the report says.

The system of the so-called "registration" in Azerbaijan was abolished far back in 90s. Moving to another area or a city, people must obtain a temporary registration in order to have access to medical assistance and to obtain the right to vote. However, the citizens often neglect this provision of law. This situation causes problems not only for the citizens. The police, who are looking for violators of traffic rules, are at a loss too, since the fines come to the address they are registered in.

"At present, about 4 million people in Azerbaijan don’t live there where they are registered in. And that's just internal migration. The number of people who left to work abroad is not known too," the report says.

Due to the gross migration from Azerbaijan to Russia the number of Azerbaijanis in Russia almost doubled in the period between the censuses of 1989 and 2010 carried out in RF. At the same time, the experts believe that the official census does not reflect the real picture, and the total number of Azerbaijanis in Russia makes approximately 2.5 million people. Accordingly, the amount of the population of Azerbaijan, the official statistics of which practically ignores the fact of migration, is less by minimum of 2.5 million people.

Most of the migrants from Azerbaijan arrived in Russia in the 1990s, however, the flow of migrants from the republic has not diminished in recent years too. So, in October 2011 Ivan Shubailov, the deputy head of the department of employment in Russia, noted that Azerbaijan is on the third place after Ukraine and Uzbekistan by the number of labor migrants in Russia.
According to the nationwide survey, conducted by the sociological service ADAM in Azerbaijan, more than 62% of the Azerbaijani population wants to leave the country permanently or temporarily.

Earlier, the experts have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that the State Statistical Committee of Azerbaijan seriously overestimates the population of the country. In particular, the number of persons indicated by the State Statistical Committee exceeds the number of voters over 18 with more than 22% or 1.5 million. This difference indicates that the officially estimated population of Azerbaijani does not correspond with the reality by at least 22%, or 2 million people.

At the same time, they had already drawn attention at the serious difference of the number of voters and the number of the citizens over 18 in Azerbaijan. Thus, on 2 November 2010, Anar Mamedly, the Head of the Election Monitoring and Democratic Studies Center, turned to the head of the Central Election Commission of Azerbaijan with a request to clarify the situation with the list of the voters.

Mamedli pointed out the difference in the number of voters in the CEC data and the State Statistics Committee of Azerbaijan. Thus, the CEC site said that there are 4,829,888 voters on the list, i.e. 54% of officially declared population of Azerbaijan. On the official website of the State Statistics Committee is written that the number of Azerbaijan's population over 18 (who has right to vote) is about 6,438,000.