2012 poll debts in limbo

THE Electoral Commission is advising service providers during the 2012 election who still have outstanding claims that they will have to wait because no funding has been allocated for them.
Electoral Commissioner Patilias Gamato said yesterday that the 2012 election service providers would have to wait until there was funding available.
Gamato told a radio talk-back show that the Government had allocated funding to him only for the this year’s national election.
“K400 milion has been budgeted for the elections of which K121 million is for the security operations by the police, defence force and Correctional Services,” he said.
“For us, we got K80 million so far and we have got big tickets like ballot boxes, ballot papers and other items to run our election preparation programmes.
“We have also disbursed some of the funds to the provincial election managers to run their preparations.”
Gamato said it was an unfortunate situation because there were people who had provided their services in 2012 but were yet to be paid.
“But I have been given the money (only) to run the elections,” the commissioner said.
“If I start paying outstanding service providers, we won’t have money to run the elections.
“In my budget submissions to the Government, I factored in the outstanding funds for service providers.
“Unfortunately, the Government did not give me that funding.”
Gamato said they had now signed contracts with services providers for the 2017 national election to avoid what happened in 2012.
“We have now signed proper contracts with them,” he said.
“In the past elections, service providers did not have contracts.
“That made it difficult.
“They have taken me to court and we have won because no contract had been signed.”