Commission’s taskforce plan welcomed

THE PNG Civil and Identity Registry has welcomed Electoral Commissioner Patilias Gamato’s plan to establish a taskforce responsible for the registration of voters.
Registrar-General Dickson Kiragi, pictured, also welcomed Gamato’s call to involve the registry in introducing an identification card voter base in preparation for the next general election in 2022.
Kiragi said through the National Identification Project, they had established administrative and system infrastructure throughout the country from 2014 to 2015.
He said the national ID card was evidence of a citizen’s identity.
Gamato told The National last week that a taskforce would be set up after the elections to address the problem of missing names on the electoral roll.
Kiragi said the collection of population and citizens’ information was a challenging and expensive task “from the coast to the plains, up into valleys and mountains, to the islands to access our geographically dispersed population”.
“The census, electoral register and population register remain the most important sources of data.”