Vijayawada: As many as 74 per cent of households in Andhra Pradesh feel either there is no corruption in the state or it has decreased. Only nine per cent feel corruption has increased, according to a latest survey.
The Planning Department of Andhra Pradesh government conducted a "Perception Survey" for a "robust vision delivery management" in May this year covering 15,960 stakeholders in 661 randomly-selected gram panchayats and 137 civic wards.
The report was released at the two-day conference of district Collectors in Vijaywada. The Perception Survey covered 15 "key result areas" like transparency and control of corruption, knowledge, skills and jobs, smart village-smart ward, standards of living, institutional reforms and employee performance, grievance redressal, etc.
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About 71 per cent of survey respondents said performance of government employees has improved in the last two years; 16 per cent said there was no difference while only three per cent said it decreased.
Fifty six per cent attributed the improvement in employees' performance to increase in retirement age from 58 to 60 years and payment of higher fitment (43 per cent).
Interesting results came out on the government's flagship Smart Village-Smart Ward programme with 52 per cent saying it's being implemented and 48 saying not.
While 37 per cent responded "favourably" to the programme approach, 34 per cent could not react. A majority 48 per cent respondents could not say if the Smart Village-Smart Ward programme led to faster development and only 28 per cent said yes.
About 40 per cent of respondents said no investments were made to improve infrastructure in villages and civic wards and another 25 per cent said they did not know.
Only 36 per cent said investments were made in 2015. Similarly, 34 per cent said infrastructure hasn't improved because of the investments but 33 per cent said yes while an equal percentage said they did not know.
Eighty one per cent of people felt standards of living in the state improved but 12 per cent responded in the negative.
The government scored high marks on the power front with 96 per cent respondents expressing satisfaction over the domestic power supply position. The rest were not satisfied.
Also, 85 per cent said there was an improvement in educational aspects and an equal percentage felt equal importance was being given to boys and girls in education.
Interestingly, 60 per cent of households felt equal wages were not being paid to male and female workers as against 31 per cent who said yes. The rest couldn't react.
The Aadhar-centric delivery of welfare benefits like ration supply and pensions elicited very positive response with 94 per cent households happy over the Aadhar-linked PDS and 87 per cent content with the pension disbursal.
Health services delivery also got a thumbs up with 87 per cent saying there was a marked improvement.
The output of the survey will be utilised for improvement in service delivery in various social sectors, the Perception Survey report said.
