Committee official hails delivery of GE22 in NGI

THE Special Parliamentary Committee on General Election 2022 (GE22) chairman Allan Bird says the best conduct of elections occurred in New Guinea Islands (NGI).
Bird said this during the consultation meeting and inquiry into the conduct of the GE22 for the NGI provinces of New Ireland, Manus, Autonomous Region of Bougainville, West and East New Britain in Kokopo last week.
He said they had already covered some of the most significant problematic areas of the recent concluded elections.
WNB election manager Emily Kelton, when giving her reports on the conduct of GE22 in the province, stated that as the provincial returning officer they began their preparations using the funds allocated to them in the budget in 2019.
This budget was prepared and submitted to the treasury in Port Moresby.
Kelton said funding was not received on time for the planning and preparation of election awareness that included the electoral roll, displaying of 2019 electoral rolls and the electoral maintenance.
This included the enrolment of the new voters who turned 18 and above on the issuing of the writs and also those issues such as the do’s and don’ts that should be followed by the candidates and scrutineers, were not captured and was never done.
Kelton told the committee that they had plans to address some of these issues, but due to limited funding they never covered them.
She said the total budget for West New Britain was K4 million but they were only given about K1.2 million.
“We had a team working with the provincial election steering committee and with the provincial government,” she said.
“They supported us but we couldn’t do much because of the limited funding.”
Kelton added the WNB government supported the election in the province with K1 million, however, that was used by the security personnel.