PCs misbehave, Census in recycle bin

KOCHI: The socio-economic and caste census 2012, the first of its kind in the country post-independence, is proving to be a failure in the district with defunct PC tablets being used for enumeration. According to sources, about 1,600 PC tablets of the 1,800 provided to the enumerators to collect data are defunct.
Owing to this, the census which has to be completed by May 20 is literally dragging in the district. So far only 27 percent has been completed, sources said. They still did not get replacement for the many broken tablets.
One of the staff members entrusted with the task of supervision said the enumerators could not cover the required number of houses in a day as the tablets went out of order. “An enumerator is supposed to cover 20 to 25 houses a day. But the damaged software in the tablets are giving a headache. The tablets get stuck frequently and the staff could only cover two to three houses a day,” he said.
Besides, the software provided to supervisors also goes erratic quite often so that they could not verify the data already collected. “We often fail in mailing a detailed report to the authority concerned daily. But to our surprise, the authority has not bothered to  inquire into the reason,” sources said.
This proved right when contacted Additional District Magistrate (ADM) E K Sujatha, who is the district census officer.
“Such an issue has not come to my notice. I cannot not say anything in this regard until I make a detailed study into the matter,” she said.
‘Indian Telephone Industries Palakkad’, which provides the technical assistance, for the census also washed of their hands saying that they are just the coordinators and it is the state government which has purchased the PC tablets. The company has also given sub-contract to another institution called Rural Source which is currently coordinating the technical knowhow in the district.
Anuraj, the district coordinator of Rural Source, admitted that the PCs have errors in their software. It could not be rectified until the company from which the tablets were purchased come up with a solution,” he said.
The ITI Palakkad drew flak at the outset by not providing suffice data operators. When the problem mounted they supplied inexperienced hands for a major purpose.