Cebu City poll office tagged as 'problematic area'

Due to its failure to cleanse some 182,000 voters’ records, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has tagged its office in Cebu City as one of at least 12 problem areas nationwide. Sun-Star Cebu (sunstar.com.ph) reported Wednesday that the Comelec Cebu City south district office had the highest number of records to be cleansed, with 118,671 records. The figures were indicated in the minutes of the Comelec’s en banc meeting held last Jan. 10. Other problematic areas tagged included Manila, San Juan, Makati, Tanjay in Rizal, Zamboanga City and Davao City were also identified as problematic areas, the Sun-Star report said. To speed up the process, Comelec Manila assigned another election officer to Cebu City to take charge of the completion of the verification process and cleansing of the voters’ list. Both the city’s election officers are now under the direct supervision and authority of the newly-appointed election officer, the Comelec en banc said. However, lawyer Leonel Marco Castillano, election officer for the south district, said Tuesday that they are almost done with the purging of the voters’ list. Castillano said he is optimistic they will beat the Jan. 31 deadline set by the Comelec central office to complete the cleansing of the voters’ records. The Comelec also sent the Cebu City poll offices 17 additional computers last week and allowed them to hire 34 casual employees who will work 24 hours in two shifts until Jan. 31. It said that based on the report of the commission’s information and technology department, the 12 cities and municipalities "were highlighted as problematic areas needing special attention due to the seeming non-action on the verification of the exception filed." Worse, the Comelec noted "attitude problems" of the poll offices’ personnel. But Castillano and North District Election Officer Marchel Sarno blamed the delay on the lack of computers and limited manpower. With their old software, a computer can process only one transaction in three minutes, but with the new one, up to 120 records can be checked in an hour. "We have the highest number of voters’ records that still have to be cleansed according to Manila’s records but as of today, all those in the computer files have been cleansed," Castillano said. He added that after checking the computer files, Comelec personnel still have to manually purge the records and discard multiple registration, records of voters who failed to vote in the last two elections, records of deceased voters and records from other precincts. Both the north and south district offices have yet to complete the manual check. Apart from Cebu City, the cities of Talisay and Toledo were also identified as problematic areas. Sarno said they could not finalize the total number of registered voters qualified to vote in the May elections because they still have to sort out those who sought a transfer of their registration records. Those with multiple photos, numbering to about 164,000 in the north district alone, and those with incomplete data in their records will also have to be discarded. "It’s a long and meticulous process. There are voters who applied as new registrants when only a reactivation or transfer of records was needed, (some records were duplicated). We have to check 200,000 voter’s records one by one," Sarno said. - GMANews.TV