The Economics and Statistics Department is gearing up to carry out the sixth Economic Census to be held in May and June to enumerate economic activities, especially of those in the unorganised sector.
A State-level training programme for trainers, who in turn will train the enumerators, began in the city on Tuesday with T.K. Ponnusamy, Director, Department of Economics and Statistics, and Jayashree Muralidharan, Collector, inaugurating the two-day event.
About 46,000 enumerators and 23,000 supervisors would be involved in carrying out the national census. Apart from the department officials, teachers, unemployed youths, and retired government servants would be roped in for the enumeration work.
The census would provide detailed information on operational and other variables, activity wise, of all the establishments (excluding crop production, plantation, public administration, Defence and compulsory social security) of the country including their distribution at the national, State, district, village/ward levels for comprehensive analysis of the structure of the economy.
Mr. Ponnusamy underlined the importance of the census as it will provide the framework and basis for policy initiatives and schemes of the government. “We want to ensure cent per cent coverage in the census and ensure accurate data,” he said.
Master trainers were given training at Thiruvananthapuram recently, who in turn are training the trainers at the two-day event here. He urged the officers attending the programme to get all their doubts clarified with respect to how to fill the forms so that they could impart training to the enumerators at the district level. The event includes field training to identify prospective problems that could arise in the enumeration, discuss the same, and arrive at solutions.
Ms.Muralidharan called upon the officials to learn from the lessons of the recent National Census and socio-economic census. People could be hesitant to give out correct information and enumerators should ensure proper cross-verification. Besides, the data collected should be compiled immediately.
P.R.Anandalakshmi, Additional Director, Economics and Statistics Department, said all filled-in forms (Schedules 6 A/6B/6C) would be scanned regularly and the exercise would be done in a decentralised manner. Provisional results of the Census will be out by July/August, she said. All establishments and economic activity would be recorded including those in the unorganized sector. A national sample survey on the service sector would be held in June. As per the previous economic survey conducted in 2005, Tamil Nadu had about 25 lakh establishments, she said. P.Kalaimani, Deputy Director, Statistics, Tiruchi, spoke.
Officers from the Central Statistical Organisation, the National Sample Survey Organisation, regional joint directors, district deputy directors, assistant directors, statistics officers, and statistical inspectors attended the training.
