Burma: Census of India 1901 Vol. I - Khamkoo

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IO
REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA.
out. I would here only mention that when at their full strength the Posting and
Tabulating departments numbered 274 and 187 clerks respectively, and that,
while occupation writing was going on, a staff of thirty occupation writers was
employed. The Checking department ordinarily numbered about the same as
the Occupation department. The normal strength of the Compilation department
All the departments were not, however, at their full strength at the
was seventeen.
same time. The maximum attendance never exceeded _
570. Experience showed
that an industrious poster had no difficulty in writing up the slips for 450
•persons (i.e., 900 slips) in an ordinary working day of seven hours (10 A.M. to 5
•p.M ) An outturn of over 720 slips meant extra pay, and a large number of energetic
men earned additional remuneration by exceeding this minimum, but the
average for good and bad workers combined was between five and six hundred
slips a day only, and with Burman posters this average is not likely to be largely
exceeded hereafter. It took some little time to teach the tabulators their work,
but when once they had mastered the system, the men were able on an average to
sort the slips for 1,500 persons a day, and I have taken this outturn as what my
successor in 191 1 may reasonably expect on an average from a Burman start that
has learnt the elements of its business. Posting and tabulating were delayed by
our having to wait while a matter of .175,000 entries written in Hkun Shan were
beino- translated by a special staff of Hkun Shan clerks who were sent to Rangoon
from" Kengtung for this purpose in September. The Kengtung schedules were
among the last to be taken in hand, and it was not till they were made over to
the posters to be posted that it was found that the clerks who had dealt with the
ordinary Shan entries were unable to read those in the Hkun script. In the end
posting and tabulating were completed, within a day or two of each other, towards
the close of October. A certain amount of compilation work was done before the
office moved up to Maymyo in November. A special gang of 72 Native of India
clerks from the offices of the Accountant- General and the Examiner, Public Works
Accounts, achieved a substantial portion during the October-November holidays.
The rest'was disposed of by a staff of clerks who accompanied me to Maymyo.
The abstraction showed that the final totals for the Province were as follows :
Males
5.342,033
Females
5.I48.59 1
Total 10,490,624
19. The following statement shows the cost of the operations, as compared
with that of the census of 1891. It is approximate
Cost of the operations.
on i yi as the final accounts for the financial year 1891-92
have not yet been made up. In the Administrative Volume the accounts will
be presented in greater detail and in a more final form, but the figures now given
will afford a general idea of the relative cost of the two enumerations. It must
be borne in mind that in 1881 and 1891 only the extra cost involved in the census
was treated as census expenditure for the purposes of the Report. Thus, the
salaries of all Government officers employed on census were then charged to ordinary
administrative heads and werenot debited to census, as at the last enumeration.
For this reason a certain percentage should properly be deducted from
the 1 90 1 figures of cost if it is desired to institute a comparison with the cost of
previous enumerations.
Head.