Amid apprehensions persisting in the minds of a section of people, the dye has been cast for the massive exercise of Intensive Household Survey 2014 (IHS-2014) across Telangana on a single day on Tuesday with the people living away from their native places, particularly the below poverty line section and the lower middle class, rushing back to their villages.
Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao reiterated on Monday that the survey was meant to list out the socio-economic status of the households for extending necessary welfare schemes to the needy. He requested people to cooperate with the government in carrying out the exercise successfully by staying back at home and giving necessary information to the enumerators.
About 3.75 lakh enumerators will visit an estimated 99.41 lakh households in the State including about 20 lakh in the GHMC limits.
Besides, the survey is aimed at identifying leakages, which the government believes are in a large scale, in the existing welfare schemes like ration cards, social security pensions, housing, fee-reimbursement and others. “The Chief Minister has spent long hours on discussing the format for collection of data by questioning the officials about every column. It only shows his government’s anxiety to reach out to every needy section by providing them necessary sops”, a senior government official said.
Buses run by RTC and private passenger vehicles were packed with people returning to their native villages, which they generally do for Dasara and Sankranti festivals or during elections. Some people are also using their own transport including two-wheelers to reach their villages in time for the survey.
According to officials, all arrangements have been put in place for the unique survey . The IHS data-sheets have been kept at the disposal of mandal-level officers for their distribution to designated enumerators before setting off to the allotted villages on Tuesday morning. As done during the elections, the enumerators would be picked up at mandal centres and dropped at the allotted villages by vehicles arranged by the government and picked up in the evening so that they could submit the data sheets .
An estimated 1,500 to 2,000 RTC buses apart from private vehicles are being hired for carrying enumerators to the allotted villages.
