He is armed with a pen and a bundle of papers. A badge that is neatly tucked on the front pocket of his thobe clearly identifies him as a census enumerator employed by the Ministry of Economy and Planning’s Central Department of Statistics and Information (CDSI).
Al-Shehri is one among nearly 7,000 enumerators in the Eastern Province whose task it is to ensure the 59-point questionnaire for the 2010 census is filled up by all Saudis and expatriates in the region within the next 15 days. He approaches one of the flats on the ground floor of a four-story building. On the front door is a census sticker pasted two weeks ago by a CDSI employee after confirming the presence of seven members of a family in the flat.
“This sticker means our people have already visited this area and have done the preliminary work...they have basically confirmed that the flat is indeed occupied and that there are x number of people staying in the flat and also their nationality has been registered,” said Al-Shehri.
“Now it is the tough task of diligently filling up all these forms,” he said, pointing to the clutch of papers that he is carrying in his hands.
He rings the doorbell and a young Saudi boy answers the door. He says his father is not home.
“When will he be back?” asks Al-Shehri. “After Isha,” says the boy. “OK, I will come back later,” comes the reply. The forms that have to be filled in have multiple fields including personal details, employment details, type of housing, type of sewage disposal and details of Internet/telephone connectivity, among others.
“Getting all these details is not an easy task ... waajid mushkila (a big problem),” says Al-Shehri. “It takes on an average 15 to 20 minutes to fill out the forms in each household. Sometimes, people get irritated by the number of questions. However, we keep our cool and keep explaining to them in the best possible way the importance of these details for the formulation of future government policies.”
The one thing that tends to irk Saudis the most is when he asks them for the names of the women members in each household.
“They look at us with contempt. What to do? This is our job,” says Al-Shehri who works as a teacher at a government school in Dammam during the day. “We have been hired for one month for census work. The first 15 days were spent in workshops and lectures and other 15 will be spent in the field. At the end of the month we will be paid SR6,200,” he said.
The enumerators, including inspectors and supervisors, were given extensive training on how to carry out the census. “We attended a number of workshops and lectures in which we were educated about people’s behavior, the counter questions, and their reluctance to part with personal information,” Al-Shehri said, adding that such a task is especially difficult in a society where personal questions about a family is generally abhorred.
At a press conference in Dammam on Tuesday, the Eastern Province’s CDSI chief Abdul Rahman Al-Thumairy admitted that the task was enormous and appealed to the media to help create a conducive atmosphere for the enumerators.
“The media can and should play a leading role in informing people about the importance of the census. Many Arabic newspapers have featured public interest advertisements exhorting people to cooperate with census enumerators,” he said.
The enumerators will continue to visit residential buildings and compounds only in the evenings from 4:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. for the next 15 days.
Al-Thumairy underscored the importance of the census in providing an up-to-date record on the demographic, economic and social features of the Kingdom.
He urged all citizens and expatriates to cooperate with employees in charge of conducting the national census and to provide them with accurate and correct information.
He said the initial focus of the enumerators was on people working for oilrigs, shipyards, border posts, seaports and airports. Women enumerators have been given the task of collecting information about women in prisons, hospitals and social welfare centers and shelters.
Al-Thumairy said his center sought the Ministry of Defense and Aviation’s help earlier this month to document the number of nomads and desert workers in Rub Al-Khali.
“Our enumerators had access to the ministry’s aircraft to carry out the exercise deep into the deserts.”
He clarified why his men were recording details about legal and illegal expatriates.
“We are not people from the Passports Department. There is this fear among illegal workers that we are out to get them or we want to deport them. That is not our job. Our job is to count the number of people that reside in this Kingdom. Let there be no fear among expatriates,” he said.
This is the Kingdom’s fourth national census for population and housing. The first was in 1974, second in 1992 and the third was in 2004. According to recent figures from the CDSI, the population of the Eastern Province is increasing by 2.2 percent annually. The figures reveal that the number of people living in the Eastern Province was 762,000 in 1974. This number rose to 2.575 million in 1992, 3.36 million in 2004, before reaching 3.545 million in 2007.
