Comelec urged to clarify statement on receipt receptacle bid

 

Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III said Friday he will seek clarification from the Commission on Elections regarding the scheduled bidding and procurement of voters receipt receptacle amounting to P27.9 million amid pronouncement that the poll body will just re-use the boxes used to pack the officials ballots.

“That’s what they said before the JCOC (Joint Congressional Oversight Committee), they will in effect re-use the boxes used for delivering the official ballots. We have to monitor this issue,” Pimentel said in a text message to GMA News Online.

Asked if he will ask the poll body for clarification, the senator said he will “write them add(itional) questions.”

During Wednesday's hearing of the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on Automated Elections, Comelec commissioner Christian Robert Lim said that the “corrugated black box used in the delivery of the ballots will be used as receipt receptacle.”

The receptacle will be used as a bin where voters will deposit the receipt they will get after casting their ballots. Voters are not allowed to bring the receipts outside the polling precinct.

He said they initially planned to use the yellow ballot boxes but “further testing, it was revealed to us that the 700 receipts could not fit in to the yellow ballot box without constantly opening the ballot box and pressing it in. There is a security issue.”

He said on March 22, the Commission en banc approved the use of the corrugated boxes for official ballots as receptacles for the voters’ receipts.

“The official ballots are contained in a black corrugated box so once the BEIs (Board of Election Inspectors) are already set up and they have removed the ballots from the corrugated box, the box will be now used as the receptacle for the voter receipts,” he said.

Lim said after the voting period, the receptacle will be taped, signed by the board of election inspectors, and will be put inside the machine together with the ballots.

But newspaper reports on Thursday, or a day after the hearing, stated that the Comelec Bids and Awards Committee already started the process to bid the voter receipt receptacle costing P300 per unit. The Comelec needs 93,000 receptacle.

The Invitation to Bid, dated March 19 posted on the Comelec website states the BAC will hold a pre-bid conference on March 28 and the submission of bids will be on April 11.

GMA News Online sought Comelec officials for clarification but they have yet reply as of posting time. — APG, GMA News