By PNA and U.S. News Agency / Asian

Latvia’s residents participate actively in support of granting citizenship to all local, mostly Russian-speaking, non-citizens.

The movement For Equal Rights has collected 9,100 notarized signatures of 10,000 necessary for a referendum on the issue, the movement’s activists said Wednesday.

“We already have 9,100 signatures. A total of 505 people signed yesterday. Our main problem at the moment is finance. On Tuesday we received 471 lats (about 940 dollars) of donations, but our daily expenses are more than 1,000 lats (2,000 dollars). That is why we are terribly short of money at the moment,” movement coordinator Andrei Tolmachev said.

“We already fail to pay for the services of notary officers for all collected signatures. I appeal to all our supporters! You have already made one step, now take a second one – help us to raise money to pay for notary services,” he stressed.

The organizers plan to present the 10,000 signatures to the Central Elections Commission, which would organize the second stage of the campaign.