Hyderabad, February 10Work has come to a virtual standstill across government offices in the city with most employees turning enumerators (for second phase of Census-2011) for the next 20 days.
Apart from government schoolteachers, officials from departments such as irrigation, roads and buildings, Transmission Corporation of Andhra Pradesh (APTransco), Andhra Pradesh Power Generation Corporation (APGenco), among others have been roped in for this mammoth exercise that will see close to 15,000 people making the rounds of every house located in the twin cities.
So, instead of poring over their pile of files, these government officials, for the rest of the month, will be knocking on the doors of denizens collecting information about their religion, profession, marital status, fertility particulars and much more.
And while census officials say that such a huge pool of enumerators is a must-have to ensure smooth completion of the work, senior government staffers are not too pleased. They rue that this temporary change in duty of their employees will seriously impact regular work in these offices.
According to a senior administrative officer of the roads and buildings department: “Almost 75 per cent of the staffers have been called for census duty. And this list includes officials of assistant executive engineer (AEE) level too.”
Trying to make a point, the senior executive said that work at the designs wing of the department, for instance, would see no progress for the next 20 days as most of the workers there would be busy with census enumeration.
Similarly, the establishment department of APTransco has also spared about 25 employees for the job. And though the figure could be a minor percentage of the total strength of the office, employees here say that the remaining staffers of the department would now have to put in longer hours to make up for the ‘missing’ officials.
“From postings to leaves of employees and other administrative matters, we need to handle everything. Now, with 25 people less we will have a tough time,” said an APTransco employee.
And if that’s not all, some head of departments even complained about how the census authorities directly sent duty orders to their juniors without their consent. And apart from causing disruption in work, these officials said, this move had also led to severe confusion.
“I still do not have a concrete list of staffers sent on census duty. While some 135-odd names have reached me, many others have received individual orders from the census office,” a senior government official said, adding, “But there is nothing we can say or do about it. It is a central government initiative and we have to co-operate.”
Meanwhile, enumerators covered VIPs in the city on Day One of the second phase of census work, which will conclude on March 1.
As remuneration, each of the nearly 15,000 enumerators will be paid Rs 3,300 in addition to the Rs 750 paid to them for attending a three-day training programme prior to the census exercise.
–Agencies