The ruling People’s Progressive Party says it is dissatisfied with the pace of several parts of the house-to-house registration and contends that at this rate GECOM will not be ready to hold local government elections this year or even next year.
The party is therefore calling on the commission to take the necessary measures to improve its work so that there can be local government polls this year.At a press briefing yesterday party General Secretary Donald Ramotar told reporters that while the party was pleased that at the moment the commission had registered over half of those eligible, it was dissatisfied with several other aspects of the process. GECOM officials could not be contacted for comment on the PPP statement yesterday. In its most recent statement, GECOM had said that the PPP and the PNCR were satisfied with the pace of the registration.
Ramotar explained yesterday that the party only came to its position recently following its meeting with the commission last month up to which time it had not received important information as it related to transactions.
After digesting the information, Ramotar said with the time that the commission is taking to edit and encode the information from the field “it is clear that (the designated) time frame (of six months) cannot be met.”
He further stated that the commission’s editing department has approximately 65 staff. “The editing began on January 9, 2008 and by April 13 the staff there edited 78,684. This was done in (96) days. This means that the rate is some 820 per day.” He added that if one were to assume that the editing is being done by some 65 staff, the rate is only 13 per person, per day.
“We believe that this is absolutely unacceptable,” he said.
Encoding
He told reporters too that the situation was more critical in relation to the encoding process. According to Ramotar the encoding department of the commission has approximately 100 staff and so far they have completed 38,331 transactions since January 18, 2008, the date that encoding started. He then determined that the encoders were doing 441 transactions per day, which means that each encoder was doing less than five transactions per day.
“Clearly at this rate GECOM will not be ready to hold Local Government elections this year or even next year. GECOM may be ready in time for the General Elections in 2011,” he declared,
Ramotar maintained that his party found the situation totally unacceptable, particularly since a large amount of resources was being pumped into the commission, adding that the Guyanese people have a right to expect much better.
On the issue of original birth certificates being used by the commission as its main source document while passports, deed polls and marriage certificates are supportive documents which registration officers would ask to see, Ramotar said his party was aware of the position the commission had arrived at before hand, but did not expect there would have been so many repercussions.
Name change
He said many persons, who were registered in the past by using baptism certificates or other methods which GECOM had previously agreed to, are now refusing to be registered because it would mean that they would undergo a name change. He said this included women who are divorced and added that the number of persons so affected as at mid-April was 1,713.
Ramotar said his party raised the issue with GECOM and was assured by the commission that women could decide which name they want to use. However, according to him, his party’s feedback was that registration officers were denying registrants this privilege.
Asked about the issues regarding legislation still to be put to the National Assembly which supports GECOM’s hosting of the local government elections, Ramotar said based on his information those pieces of legislation have already been drafted. According to him there has been some agreement on those pieces of legislation and he noted that there was some effort to take them all at once to parliament.
In a statement earlier this month, GECOM had disclosed that it met with the PPP/C on April 1 and the PNCR on April 15 on the registration exercise and at that time the parties had said they were satisfied with the pace of the registration exercise while they also raised many concerns and sought assurances about several issues relating to the process.
The PPP had said then it was troubled by GECOM’s non-acceptance of assumed names by which potential registrants are known; other than those documented on birth certificates, and the difficulties associated with accessing the said certificates, particularly for persons in hinterland areas. GECOM chairman Steve Surujbally, according to the statement, had made clear the commission’s decision to reject the national ID card as a valid source document.
That statement also said that during the meeting with the PNCR, the party queried whether the commission’s decision on the unacceptability of an ID card as a source document still stood along with the intention to produce new ID cards after the end of the house-to-house registration exercise.
GECOM said “Dr Surujbally gave the assurance that the commission’s decisions on these matters were still current.”
During that meeting too GECOM said Chief Election Officer Gocool Boodoo gave assurances that the first list of registrants was on the verge of being prepared for internal use by all Registration Officers. He had also said that electronic copies of this list would be shared with the parliamentary parties, as well as the lists of the particulars of new registrants to be added.
