Bengaluru: The door-to-door census work is moving at a snail's pace, with officials in the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) flagging "unsatisfactory" field performance due to a large number of absent staff.
To address this, some corporations have decided to onboard students as enumerators to facilitate the timely completion of house listings and surveys.
In a press note, the commissioners of the city's five corporations said that nearly 6,000 personnel, including enumerators and supervisors, have remained absent from duty. In all, the GBA had deployed a total of 23,500 enumerators and 2,900 supervisors for the ongoing exercise. This includes government officials and teachers.
Census houselisting begins; GBA deploys 26,000 staffIf the absenteeism continues, the GBA plans to file a police complaint as a last resort.
"We have already started issuing show-cause notices to absentees, alongside daily SMS reminders and follow-up calls urging them to resume work. If they fail to report immediately, we will initiate disciplinary action, including enforcement of "No Work, No Pay" and break-in-service orders," a senior GBA official said.
The commissioners have set April 24 as the deadline for absent personnel to return to duty, failing which strict action will be initiated.
The Bengaluru Central City Corporation has decided to onboard candidates who have cleared a minimum education qualification of PUC as enumerators. The corporation has scheduled a walk-in interview at the Puttanna Chetty Town Hall on Wednesday. It hopes to select approximately 1,000 candidates for the census work.
Officials said preference will be given to residents of constituencies such as CV Raman Nagar, Shantinagar, Shivajinagar, Chamarajpet, Chickpet, and Gandhinagar.
The selected candidates will be provided with an honorarium of Rs 9,000 for the first phase of work (up to May 15), which requires covering approximately 150-200 households. The second phase of Census 2027 will be conducted in February 2027, for which an honorarium of Rs 16,000 will be provided (for 150-200 households or a population of 750-800), officials said, adding the candidates will undergo training by master trainers on using the census mobile application and on enumeration procedures.
GBA Chief M Maheshwar Rao said that the other corporations will also adopt a similar approach to address the shortage of enumerators.