Incomplete data collection leaves teachers a worried lot
Teachers of government schools in and around the city who have been deployed as enumerators for the Socio Economic Caste Census in the Corporation area have been caught in a difficult situation because of the delay in completion of the Census work.
With just a fortnight left for school reopening, these teachers are worried whether the 40-day data collection work assigned to them could be completed before the start of the academic year.
Even as the Census work in rural areas is progressing at a fast pace, not even 50 per cent of enumerators in the Corporation area has been able to begin their work so far. Unless it is completed before May 31, it would mean double work for the teachers.
Around 570 enumerators have been deployed in the Corporation area. Each enumerator will have to collect data from four blocks, which would have on an average 400 to 500 houses each.
Hitches in loading data
The Census work in the Corporation area, which was originally slated to be completed by May 21, began around a month late. According to officials, the delay was caused mainly due to complications in loading onto the system the data of the 2011 Census, which forms the base data of this Census.
“The central cataloguing and image uploading of the 2011 Census data was outsourced to a private firm. There are some mismatches in this data, especially in the number of images, when it is compared with the Abridged Home List (AH List) provided by the Census Board. This has posed a huge challenge in the whole image uploading process,” a Corporation official said.
“The enumerators cannot start their field work unless the data of 2011 Census is uploaded in the tablet PC. But tallying the data provided to us with the AH List is turning out to be a laborious task,” said Asif S. Hameed, administration-in-charge at the Palkulangara Census charge centre.
Meanwhile Director of Public Instruction A. Shahjahan said that it would be difficult for the Department to exempt these teachers from their school duty.
“It will be very taxing for us if we have to go for surveys after school hours,” said a teacher from Vattiyoorkavu Government HSS.
