Bengaluru’s crucial Social and Educational survey is facing a significant hurdle: a looming shortage of staff, particularly in the South and East corporations of the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA). The state government has already pushed the deadline to October 31st, acknowledging the painfully slow progress, especially within the GBA’s jurisdiction.
To tackle this pressing issue, the government is considering a strategic redeployment of enumerators. This plan, put forth by the corporation commissioners, involves shifting staff from other GBA areas that either have a surplus of personnel or have achieved better survey completion rates.
The primary reason for this staffing crunch is that many enumerators in the South and East corporations are school teachers, who are scheduled to return to their regular teaching duties on October 23rd. Furthermore, the East Corporation is particularly struggling with a high number of ‘locked houses,’ meaning enumerators have made at least three attempts to reach residents, but without success due to their unavailability.
In a recent meeting where Chief Minister Siddaramaiah reviewed the survey’s advancement, GBA Corporation Commissioners emphasized the critical need for MLAs and other political figures to step up and encourage public participation. This appeal for political intervention isn’t new; commissioners had made similar requests previously.
Officials reported that even their direct visits to homes and apartment complexes met with reluctance from residents. One senior official shared that despite his personal efforts to visit numerous households before submitting his report, close to 100 households still refused to cooperate. “If political representatives directly appeal to residents, at least some more people are likely to participate,” he stressed.
To accelerate the survey, GBA officials have also suggested extending enumerators’ working hours by an additional three hours daily, pushing their shifts until 9 p.m. “Even with the extended deadline, progress within the GBA has been sluggish. So far, only about 40% of households have been covered in the past 15 days. With nearly 60% of households yet to be surveyed, meeting the revised timeline will be incredibly challenging without longer working hours,” an official explained.