Chief Election Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield says there is no place for political activists within the ranks of the Guyana Elections Commission (Gecom), which has embarked on a series of training programmes to ensure the availability of trained personnel for either registration or election activities.
“So those of you who may be card bearing party members, if we have any here among us today – don’t go further. Our image is sacred and we will not allow it to be contaminated with party activists among our ranks,” Lowenfield told the opening session of the two-day Training of Trainers Programme at the St Joseph High School last Saturday, according to a statement from Gecom.
He was at the time addressing an audience of approximately 200 attendees, including Registration Officers and Senior Staff of the Gecom Secretariat, whom he told that as a matter of policy, Gecom does not and will not hire political activists.
He said that while Gecom’s work may be affected by the political environment, the work of the Secretariat employees is apolitical. He also gave the guarantee that Gecom’s employment procedure will be guided strictly by the principles of candidates’ suitability to the respective positions in consideration of their relative qualifications, experiences, competences and other qualitative strengths.
Lowenfield also emphasised that “favouritism, cronyism and nepotism” would not be associated with the employment procedures being used by GECOM and that candidates for employment would be considered based on how they performed at the evaluation at the end of the training and not on relationships.
“So, those of you who may feel that you don’t have to pass the evaluation because you know someone in authority at Gecom who promised you the job – you are dead wrong. That will not happen,” he said.
In addition, Lowenfield also disclosed that the Gecom Secretariat was preparing guidelines for “blacklisting” persons who conduct themselves in any way that would bring disrepute to the organisation. He noted previous occurrences where persons deliberately flouted established procedures relative to registration and election projects and noted that, as a result of the “blacklisting” strategy any temporary or permanent employee who indulges in such malpractices would henceforth be entered in the “blacklist” and will not be employed by Gecom in the foreseeable future.
According to Gecom, the Training of Trainers Programme marked the commencement of a series of other Training Programmes that will be conducted countrywide “towards the creation of a reservoir of personnel who would be trained comprehensively about Guyana’s Registration and Election (General, Regional and Local) processes.” It explained that the objectives of this strategy are for Gecom to have readily available persons who could be employed temporarily to work for any registration and/or election project at short notice; and to remove the need for extensive cyclical training which is very costly and time consuming.
The training was conducted by Gecom’s Senior Registration Officers and attendees included persons form all of Guyana’s Administrative Regions/ Electoral Divisions.
In the case of the persons currently being trained, Gecom said the Notice inviting applications for the position of Trainers was published in the print media. Afterward, secured boxes were placed at all of Gecom’s Registration Offices across Guyana for interested persons to submit their respective applications. This exercise was carried out in addition to persons submitting their applications directly to the Human Resource manager via his official email address. It added that the ‘application boxes’ were brought to the Secretariat, where they were unlocked and opened by the Human Resource Manager.
Each application was then documented, after which the applicants who met the published requirements were shortlisted by the Human Resource Manager, under the supervision of the Deputy Chief Election Officer and the Chief Election Officer. The shortlisted applicants were then invited for training. Lowenfield, Gecom said, gave the guarantee that this will be the Standard Operating Procedure, under the guidance of the Commission, insofar as Gecom’s employment procedures are concerned.
