6 months ago
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Weeks aft Karnataka wrapped up its monolithic Social and Educational Survey connected October 31, thousands of enumerators crossed Bengaluru said they were inactive waiting for the payments they were promised aft completing 1 of the State’s astir tightly monitored data-collection drives.
The enumerators were assured of a fixed magnitude of ₹5,000, on with additional amount for each household surveyed. On average, each enumerator covered 150 to 200 households. As per the outgo structure, they were to person ₹50 for houses surveyed with 2 members and ₹100 for households with much than 2 members, amounting to roughly ₹15,000 to ₹23,000 an enumerator.
However, the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) officials progressive successful the process said the hold was owed to the ongoing reconciliation of attendance and household counts. Bengaluru unsocial had an estimated 18,000 to 20,000 enumerators, according to officials.
“Many did not study regularly, immoderate turned up lone for a fewer days, and a significant fig - schoolhouse teachers had to be relieved erstwhile schools reopened. So, calculating the last payable magnitude is taking time,” an authoritative said.
In the lawsuit of districts, the officials said the funds person already been released to the respective Deputy Commissioners, who person successful crook been instructed to wage enumerators directly. But successful Bengaluru, though slope relationship details of enumerators are collected and verified already, payment has not yet been made.
Officials from the Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes said that ₹23.87 crore has already been released, and thing was pending from their end.
The enumerators argued that each attendance and survey numbers were logged regular connected the mobile app utilized passim the exercise. “Officials accidental they are inactive counting attendance and houses covered, but these were updated connected the app each azygous day. Whenever determination were glitches, we reported it and the contented was fixed immediately. If everything was updated regularly, what precisely are they re-checking now?” asked a Bescom metre scholar deployed arsenic an enumerator.
The enumerators questioned wherefore a survey that relied wholly connected integer attendance, GPS tagging and real-time information uploads is facing longer delays than older, paper-based exercises. “This was the astir technology-driven survey galore of america person worked on. Everything was timestamped and mapped. It is astonishing that verification is taking truthful long,” an enumerator from the Higher Education section said.
They besides noted the idiosyncratic expenses they incurred portion connected duty. “We requested respective times that astatine slightest portion of our question oregon work costs beryllium reimbursed, but that was not considered. Many of america had to bargain powerfulness banks, and alternatively of taking the autobus to our regular jobs, we utilized our bikes and paid for petrol for implicit a month. If authorities cannot reimburse expenses, the slightest they tin bash is wage connected clip oregon archer america however long we are expected to wait,” Ravi S., an enumerator, who was posted in Maruthi Sevanagar, said.
