RIYADH, 21 September 2004 — Kafah Al-Dakhail, a census supervisor of five enumerators in Deriya district of Riyadh, said that two of the five men quit the group saying the job was too tiring.
Al-Dakhail said that census employees have the right to quit if they did not feel up to it.
Two of his employees had left the job after they felt tired and dissatisfied with the reward which they thought was not worth their time and effort.
The supervisor said that there are many reasons for the enumerators to quit — such as pressure of work, long hours of fieldwork, the nature of the area they work in, and lack of flexibility and the poor financial reward, which is only SR200 per day.
He said that new census employees were hired to fill the vacancies.
People have been raising various complaints about the census operation.
A citizen, for instance, said that the census application omitted many important questions such as how deeply the head of the family was in debt and what was the total debt of the entire family.
Another Saudi, Abdullah Al-Shamrani, said: “The application should not ask questions like how many video games or TV sets are there in the house. It should have asked whether all the furniture in the house are all paid for or installments are still due.”
A census official said that the enumerators faced a lot of difficulties in counting the people inside heavily guarded housing compounds.
He said the problem was however being solved by supplying the management of compounds with applications in Arabic and English to fill out. Abdul Muhsin Naser Al-Awaji, a census employee, told Eqtisadiah that the census operation is “difficult and exhausting.” He said the toughest problem faced by the employees is the absence of the man of the house.
Al-Awaji also said that the time given to finish the work is not enough. He is expected to cover 11 families a day.
