MARGAO, FEB 28
Census officials fanned out to the nook and corner of the state on late Monday evening to enumerate the houseless population.
In Margao, Deputy Collector Johnson Fernandes and his team of officials descended in the migrant inhabited Gandhi market at around 8.15 pm and went round the area tracking down the houseless.
The team managed to enumerate a few persons from the locality under the houseless population head, before they moved on to another migrant inhabitant area at Cine Lata for the houseless.
“The exercise to enumerate the houseless population is part of the census operations carried out across the country. The houseless population is enumerated on the last day of the exercise”, he said.
The census team comprised of Manoj Kamat, Cynthia Nevis Joao, Vijay Sawant, Teja Naik under the supervision of Rajendra Gaonkar.
The Deputy Collector was later seen at the Margao railway station as part of the ongoing exercise and were scheduled to head towards the Khareband area of the city.
Salcete Mamlatdar, Paresh Faldessai was in the Gudi-Paroda area of Salcete taluka with a team of officials, as part of the exercise to enumerate the houseless.
The Guddi area of Paroda village has a sizeable floating migrant population, especially working on the stone crushers and quarrying. It is against this backdrop that the Salcete Mamlatdar descended in the village late this evening.
Incidentally, while the census officials has enumerated the houseless population as part of the exercise, many Goans working on board cruise liners and merchant Navy, besides working in the Gulf were left out from the exercise by the census authorities.
Under directions from the national census authorities, the local census officials have omitted large number of Goan youth working abroad from enumeration.
The problem will be felt the most in Salcete taluka where minimum one member of a family is employed on board the ships and return home every 6-9 months depending on the contract.
Local officials feared that the census will not dish out the correct information on the population with a large section of the society left out in the exercise.
