Preliminary roll almost ready, says Trawen

By SALLY TIWARI
ELECTORAL Commissioner Andrew Trawen is confident the preliminary electoral roll for the 2012 general election will be released by the end of this month for public display and objection.
Trawen said it was due to the increase in manpower with 30 new data processing officers recruited and 30 new computers purchased to speed up the electoral data entry process.
He said this should see the increase in the number of data processing hours from the current six to 12 hours per shift.
As of yesterday, a total of 1,557,239 eligible voters had been registered on the electoral roll out of the approximately 4.3 million eligible voters.
“This is after ghost names, under-aged voters, deceased duplicates, transfers and gone-aways were removed and new enrolments and provisional enrolments (those aged 18 years in 2012) were included,” he said.
“The electoral roll base (system) currently has 3.8 million eligible voters but they have yet to be identified.”
Progress of elector data processing currently taking place at the PNGEC headquarters in Port Moresby were:
l Southern – Central and Northern electoral data entry completed and preliminary rolls have been printed and ready for public display and objection.
Gulf and Milne Bay electoral data entry completed and the printing of preliminary rolls are in progress;
l New Guinea Islands – West New Britain data entry completed and preliminary rolls have been printed and ready for public display and objection.
East New Britain and New Ireland elector data entry completed and preliminary rolls are ready for public display and objection.
New Ireland – elector data entry completed printing of preliminary rolls in progress
Manus auditing of elector data in progress.
Bougainville – fieldwork in progress and data yet to be sent to Port Moresby for processing;
l Momase – East and West Sepik elector data audited, processed and preliminary rolls have been printed and are ready for public display and objection.
Madang – elector data yet to be sent to Port Moresby from the field for processing
Morobe elector data entry in progress; and
l Highlands – Eastern Highlands elector data entry in progress
Chimbu – fieldwork has been sent to Port Moresby but data entry is yet to start.
Hela and Southern Highlands – elector data sent to Port Moresby and auditing is in progress but data entry is yet to start
Enga, Western Highlands and Jiwaka – elector data yet to be received from the field and sent to Port Moresby for processing.
Trawen said the PNGEC was engaging 42 data processing officers who will work along checkers and roll auditors to process all elector data on a 24-hour basis.
The preliminary roll will be displayed in all provincial electoral offices, LLG offices and council wards for verification.
“This is the time for those eligible voters who had missed out on enrollment or whose names are not on the electoral roll to register by filling in a new claim enrollment form,” he said.