By CLIFFORD FAIPARIK
THE Electoral Commission is K250 million short of their required budget as the country goes into the 2022 national election, Deputy Electoral Commissioner John Kalamorah says.
“As we commence election on May 12 on the date of the issuing of writs, we only have K150 million to run our elections. We required K400 million from the National Government to run the elections.
“Fortunately donor partners like the Australian government have assisted us and have supplied us ballot papers for all the electorates including the seven new electorates,” he said.
Mr Kalamorah said on Wednesday that the common roll was ready.
“I had assured the political parties on Monday that the rolls would be ready for nominations right across the country. We started the roll update very late. We started the updating exercise in January and the expectation from everyone is to have a good accurate, reliable roll. And we have done the best we can,” he said.
“So there will be a roll for everybody. We are not starting new rolls as persons who are on the roll in 2017 will still be on the roll.
What we did is we have given each ward and village an allowance of 15% increase on the total number of voters (that are on the 2017 roll) and have provided form 11 (enrollment forms ) to cater for the 15% increase.
And these forms have been given to each ward to update the rolls. Unfortunately the time has lapsed and that’s the best we can do for everyone on nomination day.”
Kalamorah also said that if necessary they would continue updating the roll during the polling.
“We will still decide on that. I mean there will still be a lot of work to be done during the polling given that we have separate male and female polling lines so there will be more people and more work,” he said.
“So we will still decide what extra work they (polling officers) can do in updating the roll. We have discussed the issues and that’ may happen if the work load does allow.
“We can do some updates during the poll as well.
It is not something new; we have thought about it and we are still assessing whether we should go along with our normal poling duties as there is too much work already.
“We also have the Covid-19 issues to manage and you really need to assess the environment carefully before introducing new work load basically (like updating the roll during the polling.”
Kalamorah said that the EC would engage about 40,000 temporary electoral workers as polling officials.
“Returning officers and assistant returning officers throughout the country are now having their final workshops in preparation for the elections,” he said.