Ghaziabad: The district administration is engaging staff from around 50 private schools into the Census 2027 exercise, citing inadequate manpower to carry out the large-scale house listing operation.At present, around 9,445 staff have been designated to conduct the enumeration in the 7,848 blocks of the district, with each enumerator expected to cover 150 to 180 households. Earlier, 51 departments had been directed to identify and deploy personnel but gaps in staffing forced the administration to include private school employees.“We have held meetings with the principals of over 50 schools, along with the district inspector of schools, expecting cooperation from the private school teachers to cooperate with the district administration in carrying out the house listing. A state govt order regarding this was also issued, which allowed the district administrations to engage private school staffers for the exercise. Each private school has deputed around 10-15 teachers from their school for the work to support the administration,” said Saurabh Bhatt, additional district magistrate (finance/revenue).Private school teachers were asked to step in during the enumeration for Census 2011 as well.The house listing and housing enumeration is scheduled between May 22 and June 20. Enumerators will be paid an honorarium of Rs 25,000 upon completion of the exercise.The administration also made it clear that attendance at training sessions, meetings and related activities is mandatory for all personnel deployed for Census work. Around 100 enumerators were issued warning notices after they skipped a training session held on Sunday. Officials cautioned that such absence amounts to negligence and could lead to salaries being withheld if repeated and invite strict action under the Census Act.Trainings are being conducted in batches of 50 participants.In a directive dated April 17, district magistrate Ravindra Kumar Mandar said the first phase of the census — house enumeration — is time-bound and critical, and must be treated as a top priority across departments. He instructed all heads of departments to relieve officers and employees assigned to census duty from their routine responsibilities so they can focus entirely on the exercise.The DM warned that accountability will not stop at individual staff, and heads of departments will also be held responsible if their assigned personnel fail to comply with census duties.The administrative framework includes 16 charge officers, four master trainers, 134 field trainers and over 1,600 supervisors.Residents will also have the option to self-enumerate online between May 7 and May 21.An official said an awareness drive in the district to involve social organisations like RWAs, industries and traders will also be undertaken in the coming weeks.
