All systems go

By MALUM NALU
IT is all systems go for next year’s elections – with Electoral Commissioner Patilias Gamato happy to be allocated K400 million in the national budget to run the national poll.
“I’m happy that the Government has allocated K400 million for the elections in 2017,” Gamato said.
“Out of the K400 million, K121 million is for security and K279 million for the actual election operations. With that amount of money, we can run the elections in 2017.”
He assured the people of Papua New Guinea “that the amount of money is sufficient”.
“I’m saying this because we delivered the last election (in 2012) with K180 million just for election operations, including security,” he said.
It is part of the “tight” 2017 national budget tabled in Parliament yesterday by Treasurer Patrick Pruaitch.
The issuing of writs will be on April 20 next year.
Gamato said he was confident on delivering the general election as expected because the commission was well-advanced in its planning.
“We will deliver the 2017 elections,” he said.
“Election administration is across the provinces.
“With that type of money, we can run the elections.
“The procurement of the big-name items like election materials will be done this year, including the printing of ballot papers.
“These are the major components and Government will allocate K30 million before the end of the year.
“We will use that money to print the ballot papers, prepare ballot boxes and election materials.
“That should take some component out of the costs for us to do the actual preparations for election administration.
“Most costs of election administration go towards the allowance for temporary election workers.”
Gamato said about 130,000 public servants around the country would be engaged as returning officers, assistant returning officials, polling officials and counting officials. They will be supported by the temporary election workers.
“The second expenditure will be the transport cost of delivering election materials, ballot papers to the polling stations to conduct the elections,” he said.
Gamato said preparations were centred on polling schedules.