"Some 40,000 field inspectors underwent a weeklong training program on the procedures that will help facilitate easy data collection," said Abdullatif I. Al-Khamees, head of the media center for the project.

Under the project, houses will be numbered and grouped into blocks and districts.

The initiative was launched Feb. 9 at a ceremony attended by the Minister of Economy and Planning Khaled Al-Gosaibi and other top officials from the Kingdom and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.

The Kingdom is conducting the project with the other five GCC countries for the first time to come up with a unified census. This was decided during the 22nd GCC Supreme Council meeting in Oman.

"We urge residents, both Saudis and expatriates, to cooperate with visiting field inspectors. As a precursor to the national census operation, the inspectors will ask only the number of occupants in the house and their nationalities," Al-Khamees said.

The project is designed to collect, conduct, compile and disseminate demographic, social and economic information about the Kingdom's population.

He added that when the numbering process is finished, the inspectors will decide on the number of enumerators (a person employed in taking the census of a population) required for each area for the final census operation.

Abdullah Al-Batil, in charge of the data processing unit, said an unspecified number of women would be recruited to work as data collectors.

"But this will depend on the feedback from the field inspectors, which will determine how many areas they are deployed in," he said.

He said female data collectors would be recruited for places that have women-only sections, such as hospitals, schools, and banks.

The recruitment process for women will be for a period of one month and start by the end of March.

A one-week training program will be given to successful female candidates, who will be paid SR200 per day.

They will include both Saudis and expatriates and they will also be trained on how to fill out the 59-point questionnaire accurately.

The Kingdom conducted its first official census in 1974, when the Kingdom's population was only 7,099,466. Saudis accounted for 6,218,361 of the total population, while the rest were expatriates.

The population of Saudi Arabia is now more than 25 million, out of which 18,543,559 are Saudi nationals.

"Of that number, 9,307,550 are men and 9,235,969 are women," Al-Batil said.

The National Census runs from April 28-May 12.