RIYADH — The field work for the Saudi Census 2020 started on Monday and will run through until March 6. The 33-day exercise will cover the phase of numbering of buildings, residential units and enumeration of households. This is considered as one of the major phases of field work for the Project of the 5th Census of Population, Housing and Establishments in the Kingdom titled "Saudi Census 2020", which is being implemented by the General Authority for Statistics (GATSTAT) in accordance with a decision taken by the Council of Ministers three years ago. Subsequently, the preparatory work for the census started in 2017 and that reached the phase of enumeration and publishing the results. The numbering of buildings would follow the start of the 20-day phase of actual enumeration that will begin from March 17 and will conclude on April 6. The phase of numbering buildings aims to collect information about buildings and residential units for use in the census project, as well as to distribute the workforce necessary to enumerate the population, and provide data on the number of households and their members. More than 11,000 monitors have been provided with training on the use of the national address that is made available on buildings by the Saudi Post, as well as on the rules and methods to take inventory of buildings; numbering of residential units; handling of possible cases during the building inventory and numbering process; methods of filling up the form for the inventory and numbering of buildings; field and office review of the process; training on dividing the monitors' work area and methods of field work for the researchers. Saudi Census 2020 is different from previous censuses especially in the method of enumeration. This census will be a traditional/register-based one, which relies on merging the register-based data with field data. In this census, GATSTAT will use diverse methods to obtain more accurate information by linking the databases with each other. In addition, the authority will cooperate with the Saudi Post, the National Information Center, and the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs to implement the census works. The form of this census will be designed and data will be collected through linkage with administrative records to obtain the households' main data. However, additional data should be completed through households' field visits. The Census enumeration covers all Saudi and non-Saudi individuals living inside Saudi Arabia at the time of the census whether they are permanent residents or visitors. The enumeration process includes all economic establishments operating in a particular geographical area. The labor force required for enumerating the establishments in these areas include supervisors, inspectors, monitors, and enumerators, will be estimated based on the data completed during the preparatory phases of the exercise.
