THE acting Electoral Commissioner Simon Sinai told media on Friday that the biometric voting will begin in the 2022 National General Election (NGE).
Biometric system includes the issuing of Personal Identification Card (ID) which will be done by the Electoral Commission to voters to be used during polling.
Mr Sinai explained that biometric system to be used in the election is the easiest way forward; however, it has to start from a smaller scale as a way of going forward.
He said that Electoral Commission will start the biometric system starting with four cities in the country before expanding to the 89 districts.
“Biometric is easy to go, but we have to start somewhere and that we will start at the smallest scale.
“We will start in Port Moresby. We got the machines to do it. We have tested it, we have run it and we are confident that we are going to do verification and identification of voters and issuing of ID cards to the voters in the city starting in Port Moresby, Lae, Mount Hagen, Rabaul and Madang.
“Those targeted areas are for us to see how we can manage as a way going forward into 2023 to 2027 and for the better management of the Biometric system to be used in the future.
“Firstly we would like to see an electoral roll that is containing all the photos of the voters and at the same time the machine that we have, can take a picture of you, produce your photo, put it into the system and at the same time can print the ID card.
“We have 120 machines already and we want to get some more to go into the 331 LLGs and to try to cover the population there.
“If time fails us then we resort back, but at least we are covering some of the critical electorates and areas that we want to address given the past experiences faced during elections.
He said that the commission has already had a proposal established on ground to liaise and engage with respective council wards and LLGs.
“The structure is there, we just need the resources to do awareness, print the rolls, send it out and to do verifications if need be,” Mr Sinai said.