Telangana survey: Some hits, some misses

Hyderabad: Despite several calls to the Hyderabad Civic Body call centre number for the Samagra Kutumba Survey 2014, residents received no response.

When Taruni Neeraj, a resident of JJ Nagar in Neredmet, called up the civic body helpline number, she was informed that no enumerator would be sent to her place, because her colony was not listed in the survey. “There are over 15 houses in my lane and till late evening no enumerator turned up. When I called the number, they told me that my colony was not included. They did not even come for the pre-visits. They asked me to call one Venkateshwar, the nodal officer of Malkajgiri, who also has not responded,” she said.

Many were trying all possible ways to communicate the absence of enumerators in their colony, but no one turned up till late evening to record the listed details.

Rajesham, a resident of the Manjeera Colony in Alwal said, “Since no one turned up till 8 pm, we thought we should go and report this at the civic body office. They told us that they would send someone late night on Tuesday or the next day. We have to wait and see.”

There was no pre-survey 1 and 2 conducted at Nagaram, Rampally and few other areas on the peripheral belt of Civic body and when citizens called the helpline, they were told that “the helpline was only for GHMC residents.”

Mukhtar Ahmed Fardeen, president of the All India Urdumass Society for Peace, wrote to the Deccan Chronicle about the same. “We collected 20 forms ourselves and handed them over to the supervisor because there were no enumerators. We are requesting the authorities to send the enumerators again to Circle 7 areas of Aghapura and Asifnagar and we will cooperate again.”

Citizens and college students at the Kala Dhera near Chaderghat helped a woman enumerator with the survey form as she was the only one assigned to cover more than 80 houses in the area. Troubled with the heat and the work, she burst out at people, who then helped her. Many more enumerators around Malakpet, Vanasthalipuram, Dilsukhnagar, Koti areas complained of too high a target to be completed by them throughout the day. Most of them said that they were not given proper lunch facilities as well.

There were also complaints of enumerators not being well trained for handling the survey. There was shortage of forms in English in some areas causing inconvenience to non Telugu speaking people. However, the enumerators helped them out. Each enumerator was given 40 to 50 houses to cover.

Protests broke out in parts of the old city on Tuesday as certain areas were left out of the survey. People protested in Mangalhat, Saidabad, Talabkatta, Bahadurpura and Moghulpura in the late afternoon as they waited the whole day for the enumerators in vain. In Mangalhat and Saidabad (Sri Nagar colony), residents became fed up waiting for the enumerators and finally burned the survey forms.

In Barkas, Yakutpura and Chandrayangutta, residents, allegedly, did not cooperate with the enumerators and did not allow them inside their houses or provide details. Residents of these areas say that enumerators sat in libraries, public grounds, schools etc., and asked people to fill up the forms with details and hand them over.

“There were two reasons for it; one was because people were not allowing us inside the houses and two, when they did, it would take about an hour per house as there were multiple families in one house. We had a target of 40-50 houses, so we could not afford to spend so much time going door-to-door; we set up dedicated spots where they submitted forms.”

“There were rumors in this part of the city that the enumerators would break into the houses and check all the possessions and things like non-payment of taxes and other illegal possessions too would come into the picture, so people feared and refused to cooperate in places,” said Mohd Irfan, a resident of old city.

According to sources, 20-25 per cent houses in the old city had been covered unofficially on Monday to ease the process on Tuesday, but the whole process was very slow and it might take another day to cover the old city.

Meanwhile all BPS and IT-enabled companies worked on Tuesday despite it being a state holiday. Employees were asked to come by their own transport as cabs were off duty.

However, all indirect staff like security, canteen, and house-keeping were given a holiday. The IT ministry had earlier issued a notice giving an option to employees to call the enumerators to visit before 7 am or late in the night by producing a letter from the management.