Comelec-8 announces full-swing voter’s education campaign
TACLOBAN CITY- The OIC Regional Director of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) announced yesterday their full-swing and simultaneous voter’s education campaign all over the region starting this week amid criticism of the Comelec’s alleged lackluster voter’s education program.
Lawyer Jose Nick Mendros said during the weekly media forum Express It At The Park that they will intensify tri-media information campaign on automated election to ensure that voters will have the automated election process fresh in their minds.
“It is during the campaign period when the interest of the voting public is most high. When the interest is at its peak, the poll body will be there with its tri-media campaign,” Mendros said.
The same voter’s education campaign will simultaneously be conducted on Jan. 25 in other parts of Eastern Samar and the whole of Biliran province.
It was learned that by February 1-14 the same activities will be replicated in the whole province of Leyte for public demonstration in using the PCOS machine and on February 15- 24 and 25 will be in Samar and Northern Samar provinces.
However, the whole of March, according to Mendros, is the scheduled training of 15,699 teachers who will be serving during the election.
“There is no worry for the voters because what they should do is only to shade the name of the candidates they want because it is the members of the board of election inspectors who will operate the machine,” Mendros explained.
The Comelec official also made it clear that they still have enough time to go to the field to conduct the voter’s education while the campaign period for the national candidates starts on Feb. 9.
The Comelec national office earlier confirmed that with only about P100-million budget for voters’ education, they need to spend more efficient campaigns for the voters. The poll body might seek the help of the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas and other groups to get its message to the voters.
Contrary to what its critics are saying, starting voters’ education in March for local candidate is “not really late.” He added that before heading on to a total campaign, the poll body must make sure that the Boards of Election Inspectors are constituted and that the modules needed for the voters’ education are completed.
“We’re going to go down to the grassroots level. What we’re doing is we’re working with civic organizations and our regional offices,” Mendros said.
The Comelec will use the 20 PCOS machines delivered by Smartmatic-TIM in a road show demonstration.
It was learned that each of the country’s 16 regions will have one unit of PCOS machine except for Metro Manila where five machines may be used. At least 49.1 million voters nationwide have registered for next year’s elections.
In 2007, some 45 million voters took part in the electoral exercise.
The Comelec would need some 240,000 teachers to man a total of 74,000 polling precincts as members of the Board of Election Inspectors.
The poll body would have some 8,000 spare precinct count optical scan machines since it ordered 82,200 units from the joint venture Smartmatic International Corp. and Total Information Management Corp.
The Comelec has already met with officials of the Department of Education to discuss the package of compensation that would be given to teachers.
The Comelec has agreed to increase the honoraria of teachers, who used to receive P1,000 per day of service as BEI. “For the amount of work, they get more value now as compared to the previous election,” he said.
Before, the teachers served for only three days, but with the automated polls, they would serve for four days, including the day for the mock election. (MIRIAM GARCIA DESACADA)
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