The Guyana Elections Commission (Gecom) received 35,055 applications during its latest continuous registration exercise, which ended on Monday.
In a statement yesterday, Gecom said the registration offices are currently verifying the residency status of the persons who applied to be registered during the 3rd cycle of Continuous Registration. Up to Tuesday, the residency status of 30,143 applicants had been verified. Failure to verify the residence status of an applicant would result in their applications being put on hold.
Gecom said the registration exercise began on March 17, 2012 and saw applications for the registration transactions at the Gecom’s 27 permanent registration offices, located in the country’s ten registration districts. It noted that during the latter half of the exercise, a temporary registration sub-office was set up at the Better Hope Community Centre, on the East Coast of Demerara, aimed at providing easier access for eligible persons residing between and including Industry and Triumph, East Coast Demerara, to conduct registration transactions.
Further, it said the exercise was supported by the deployment of Mobile Registration Units (MRUs) to aid those eligible persons from far-flung riverain and hinterland communities, who are faced with extreme difficulties in visiting the established registration offices responsible for their respective communities.
According to Gecom, after the verification of residency at the registration offices, the details of verified applicants are sent to the Gecom Secretariat.
These include fingerprints taken during the application process, which will be dispatched overseas to be cross-matched with the fingerprints of all registrants listed in the National Register of Registrants (NRR) to check for multiple registra-tions. Subsequently, all of the approved new registrants would be added to the NRR and National ID cards would be produced and issued to all of the newly-registered person.
In addition to the applications by prospective registrants, the continuous registration exercise saw 3,791 applications for registration changes and or corrections.
Gecom also said after completing the verification of the residency status of the applicants, all of the permanent registration offices will routinely treat with applications for replacements for lost or damaged ID cards, as well as in cases where the photographs on ID cards are found to be of poor quality. Also, uncollected National ID cards, which were produced from the 2008 House-to-House Registration exercise and afterward, could be uplifted from the respective registration offices.
