Biometric registration for election to be done in urban areas

BIOMETRIC registration using photo identification roll to vote in the 2022 national election will only be conducted in urban areas, says acting Electoral Commissioner Simon Sinai.
“We will have the normal common roll updating in the rural areas,” he said.
“This is due to the limited time as we only have six months to go before elections commence in April 2022.” Sinai said they wanted to conduct biometric registration to update the common roll around the country before the 2022 election.
“We wanted to do biometric registration because we are aware that the common roll (poses) problems during elections,” Sinai said.
“With biometric registration using photo roll, we will eliminate ghost names, the inflation of voters and other problems associated with the common roll that we faced in past elections.”
The biometric registration had been successfully tested in the local level government by-election for the Kupiano ward in Abau, Central in October last year.
“Unfortunately time has run out and funding we required from the Government for the biometric registration nationwide was not received,” he said.
“So whatever funding we have will be used to register voters by photo identification roll in urban areas only.” Sinai said whether the registration was through biometric or common roll, they had to update the common roll by enrolling eligible voters who would be 18 by 2022.”
“We have the base roll used in the 2017 national election and the 2019 local level government elections. The roll is already available. We will target only people who will be 18 by the 2022 election.”