GUWAHATI: The National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) is set to conduct its pan-India 76th survey round on drinking water, sanitation, hygiene and housing condition and a second survey of persons with disabilities in Assam.
Officials from the NSS’s office in Guwahati conducted a two-day regional training programme to impart training to the field officers for data collection at the ground level.
The data collected from this survey will be used by the central as well as the state government for planning, development and to take policy decisions. The NSS officials also requested the public to cooperate with the data collection process and provide the field officers with correct information as any wrong information will result in an incorrect database and will, in turn, lead to faulty planning by the government.
Speaking during the training session, additional director general, NSSO FOD, Harbinder Singh said, “The survey is of six months’ duration. It will start from July 1 and will continue till December 31. The data will be utilised by the ministry of health and family welfare, Niti Ayog and the Registrar General of India.”
Officials said that the collection will go on for six months after which it will be published after one year.
Talking about a new feature in data collection, Singh said that this time the data will be collected on electronic schedule.
“This time the officers will carry a tablet with them for data collection and the respondents will enter their responses on the machine itself. So the data entry time will be reduced when earlier the field officers would have to manually record the data and then transfer it online,” said Singh.
The survey is being conducted to assess the facilities which are available to the masses, informed officials.
NSSO authorities said that the last survey on disability was conducted during the 58th round of NSS between July and December 2002. During this, data was collected on the nature of disability of the household member in which mental disabilities were also included.
Further, some of the objectives of survey on drinking water, sanitation, hygiene and housing condition are to ascertain the facilities of drinking water, sanitation along with housing facilities available to the households. The micro environments surrounding the houses are important determinants of living conditions of the people.
Further, the main objective of the survey of persons with disabilities in Assam is to estimate indicators of incidents and prevalence of disability, cause of disability, age at onset of disability, facilities available to the person with disability, difficulties faced by them in accessing public buildings and transport.
It will also look into the arrangement of regular caregivers and out of pocket expenses of persons with disabilities.