With the recently held socio-economic survey failing to cover 2.37 lakh families in Bengaluru, the Social Welfare Department wants to take up one more round of survey to cover these families.
Replying to BJP member Vishveshwara Hegde Kageri in the Assembly on Thursday, Social Welfare Minister H. Anjaneya said he will take a final call on the new round of survey after consulting Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. The survey had been taken up to identify the backward classes and know their socio-economic and educational status in a bid to help evolve effective programmes for their welfare.
He said coverage of the socio-economic survey was only 88.82 per cent in Bengaluru as against the level of cent per cent in other places. The survey was supposed to cover 21,16,949 families. But it was able to cover only 18.80 lakh families, he noted.
Of the 2.37 lakh families which were not covered, 1,01,846 families could not be contacted by the enumerators as their houses were locked while another 21,645 families simply refused to share information, the minister said.
The uncovered families also included those who had taken temporary accommodation such as paying guest accommodation, hotels and guest houses.
He said it had not been able to improve the coverage of houses in Bengaluru under the survey despite giving various opportunities by extending the deadline. In fact the deadline for the month-long survey had been extended throughout the state including Bengaluru from April 30 to May 5. Again the deadline had been extended from May 5 to 15 only for Bengaluru. When there was no good response to this, the government had advertised the names, telephone numbers and email IDs as well as office addresses of joint commissioners of all the eight zones in the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike in the media to be contacted by such uncovered families for sharing their details. Similarly, the BBMP too had advertised the telephone numbers of survey officers in-charge of all the 198 wards, the minister noted.
He felt that hiring of the private school teachers who were not good in Kannada may also have had a negative impact on the survey in Bengaluru.
The government had released Rs. 134.96 crore for the survey which is estimated to cost around Rs. 189 crore. Of this, Rs. 117.45 crore had been disbursed among the district authorities and Rs. 36 crore from this had been spent so far.
The enumerators had been paid only half of their remuneration so far and they would be paid in full after the entry and tabulation of the data was completed, he said.
