The Supervisor General in Jeddah for the 2010 National Census has said that 7,500 staff have been mobilized to conduct the task of gathering census information in the region and that GPS satellite technology is being employed to identify sites. Khaled Al-Shalan said that Jeddah districts have been classified along the lines of definitions from the Mayor's Office and census specialists have divided areas up into zones of sectors and blocks for easy reference. “The authorities in charge have appointed 45 supervisors, 1,100 controllers and 5,500 census-takers,” Al-Shalan said. “220 supervisors have also been trained in updating existing field marks that were made in districts nine months ago by the General Statistics and Information Department.” Al-Shalan said that inspectors who successfully pass the training course would be posted to districts to supervise between 30 and 35 controllers, who themselves are to take a special training course in a month's time.” The forms for the 2010 National Census for Population and Housing contain 59 questions on a variety of information, and some 43,000 workers are being deployed across the country ahead of the 15-day main operations scheduled to start on April 28. The census will also incorporate Saudis living abroad. Officials in the Northern Border province said earlier this week that they would be employing women and GPS systems to aid in the collection of data for the census. According to Saleh Al-Khoshaiban, the supervisor general of the census in the province, GPS systems will speed up the process of identifying sites requiring census attention, while the “female element” would help at “places where there are groups of women, such as student residences and nurse accommodation”. The Census Bureau has repeatedly assured nationals and foreign residents that privacy will be protected “even if an expatriate's work status is illegal due to the expiry of residence permit”.
