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2.1 Staffing 
Staffing for surveying and mapping would depend on a number of factors. 
It would naturally vary from one country to another and on the state of 
its development. It is, for example, generally stated that for health care 
we would like to have in Sri Lanka 1 Medical Doctor for a population of 
5,000 inhabitants as adequate. But unfortunately to this category would 
fall different types of "doctors" from specialists in various fields of 
specialisation, the general medical practitioners and the others who fall 
to the category as the Apothecary (really Medical Assistants), the bare- 
foot doctors, the Homeopaths, the Ayurvedic (native) Physicians and so 
on. 
Likewise in the surveying and mapping profession too, we have the differ- 
ent specialisations as well as levels of competence. Therefore, one cannot 
give a rule of thumb answer like "One surveyor for 2,000 inhabitants" 
(quoted from Standard of Competence First Circular Appendix 3) which could 
be rather very misleading. The more rational way is to assess the require- 
ments of the different types of specialists required, as well as their 
levels of competence. 
2.2 Sri Lanka Experience in Staffing 
At this stage I would rather start from a known example in Sri Lanka, where 
we have a population of 14 million inhabitants. The Survey Department has 
the highest number engaged in the related profession; with a professional 
survey engineer who has qualified in the different aspects of surveying, 
under whom the survey technicians execute the work. Generally in the de- 
partment there are 5 specialists, 120 professional supervising survey en- 
.gineers, 50 non-professional supervising engineers (technologists) and 
1,500 survey technicians of all categories or a ratio of 5:120:50:1500 
or if we simplify it further, we have a ratio of 
specialist : supervising survey engineers : survey technicians 
1 : 34 : 300 
in the survey department of Sri Lanka (for details see Appendix I). 
In addition to this, there are others, in other government departments 
where there are about 7 specialists, of which around 5 remote sensing specialists 
about 15 in the supervising surveyor engineers grade and around 50 to 100 
survey technician (of which about 12 are remote sensing technicians who 
are mainly in the Land Use Division of the Irrigation Department). 
In addition to these categories, there are around 484 engaged in private 
practice as licensed surveyors who are mainly retired public servants from 
the survey department, of survey technicians grade, while there are a few 
qualified by exams conducted by the survey department who register as licens- 
ed surveyors to meet the limited requirements. 
In short we could say that in Sri Lanka for a population of 14 million 
people we have nearly 12 specialists in the different fields of surveying 
(0f which 3 specialists in photogrammetry with M.Sc. degrees), and nearly 
180 in the category of surveyor engineers (of which there are around 8 
trained with photogrammetric engineering degree or post graduate diploma 
trained in remote sensing abroad), and around 2,000 at the level of survey 
technicians of all categories (of which around 20 trained in photogrammetry/ 
remote sensing of technician level, qualified abroad), whilst there are 
many, only introduced to photogrammetry/remote sensing techniques with 
Fernando 4