ELECTORAL COMMISSION IOF UGANDA TO HIRE 8,000 OFFICIALS FOR THE PURPOSE OF REGISTERING NEW VOTERS
Writes Leo Odera Omolo
The Electoral Commission is to recruit 8,000 workers to resgister the voters in readiness for the next year’s general election,the government -owned NEWVISION reported this morning.
This will mean that there will be two operators per registration point.
Speaking at the commission’s head office in Kampala yesterday, chairman Badru Kiggundu said the equipment for the training of trainers had arrived and the training starts on April 8.
Engineers from Germany have also arrived to train the operators who will carry out the voter registration. Kiggundu also announced that the voter registration process will start on May 3 and will run for one month. The exercise will exclude those who are already registered.
“The people eligible to register during this period are Ugandan citizens of 18 years and above, who have not had their pictures and bio-data taken before by the Electoral Commission for the purpose of registration,” said Kiggundu.
The process will also involve cleaning the 10.5 million voters on the current voter’s register using a facial recognition system to get rid of multiple registrations.
The commission revived the suspended biometric registration system last month.
The decision came together with the announcement that Mühlbauer Technology Group from Germany had won the contract to implement the national identification project.
The commission suspended the plan to use a biometric voter registration system last November due to lack of money and limited time to the 2011 election.
But they made a U-turn when the internal affairs ministry procured the biometric equipment to carry out the national identification project at about sh180b.
Voters will be registered in the first phase of the project. According to Kiggundu, Mühlbauer will deliver 4,000 registration kits, which shall be used in the capturing of the projected 3.5 million new voters, including capturing their demographic data, photograph and fingerprints, using a computer-based registration kit.
Kiggundu said he is optimistic that the commission shall beat the new deadline of June 4 for registration of new voters and update of the register.
The commission had earlier fixed May 15 as the deadline. “I call upon all Ugandans to come up and support this project.
“All of us have for a long time yearned for this advancement, and it’s here to assist in building credible voter’s register,” he said.
Ends