Trawen: Common roll will be ready before May 18

ELECTORAL Commissioner Andrew Trawen has assured members of parliament that 93% of the common roll is processed.
The rest will be completed before the writs for the general election are issued on May 18.
Trawen told an audience at the state function room in parliament including unionists, police, defence force and members of the media that work had been completed for all the wards in Southern Highlands, Hela and Jiwaka provinces.
He said the preliminary rolls had been despatched last Monday to returning officers for public inspection.
He confirmed that preliminary rolls for the majority of wards in Western Highlands, Chimbu and Enga had also been despatched.
He said further processing this week would see all those wards completed and sent by early next week.
Trawen said Eastern Highlands was the focus of attention now and he was pleased that fieldwork data from 34 wards in East and West Okapa LLGs were sent to Port Moresby for data processing.
He was confident the remainder would follow shortly and that the preliminary rolls for the
highlands provinces would
be available for public inspection by the end of next week.
“Even the latest mate­rial to get out for public inspection would still give
more than three weeks for the public to check the data to make sure it is accurate, before the rolls close with the issue of writs on May 18,” he said.
He said in summary, of the total 2,142 wards in the highlands, 1,723 had now had their preliminary rolls printed for public inspection and processing for only 419 wards remained.
“I want to repeat that this roll improvement programme is on target.”
The other three regions – New Guinea Islands, Southern and Momase – have already displayed their preliminary rolls for public viewing and inspec­tion.
The updates are as follows:
lNGI – of the 796 wards, 136 wards have returned their feed-back information to Port Moresby for final processing, while 804 wards have yet to return their data:
lSouthern – of the 1,214 wards, 410 have returned their feed-back data for final processing, while 804 wards have yet to; and
lMomase – of the 2,012 wards, 312 wards have returned their feedback data, while 1,710 have yet to do so.
“In summary, for the nation, data for 5,745 wards has been received and processed out of the 6,164 wards in PNG.
“The commission is continuing to work 24 hours a day to complete data entry and printing for the remaining 419 wards,” Trawen said.
“In percentage terms, 93% of all preliminary rolls for the country has been completed, just 7% of the wards remain and the electoral commission wishes to assure the public that the roll improvement programme will be completed before the elections.”