AN ELECTION budget of $360 million has been approved for the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ), Danville Walker, Director of Elections said yesterday.
He made the disclosure while speaking at a press briefing at the Old Hope Road headquarters of the Electoral Advisory Committee (EAC). The briefing was called to give an update on the state of preparedness of the EOJ and EAC ahead of the upcoming general election which Prime Minister P.J. Patterson said will be held before the end of the year.
"That (the $360m) includes the payment of all election day workers, training, transportation, printing costs and so on," Mr. Walker said. He added that it was "very expensive to have elections..."
According to Mr. Walker, much more emphasis was placed on training workers this time around. At least $20 million of this sum will go to training, he said.
Roughly 20,000 election day workers are being recruited to man polling stations on election day. All training material and training aides have been redone and training videos produced. Workers are given a copy of the video to review in their own time. Additionally, indoor agents are being trained in an attempt to increase transparency.
A public education campaign explaining what takes place inside a polling station is being planned and a training kit detailing election offences has been produced and is available to all members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
Meantime, a record 53,307 persons were enumerated as part of the continuous registration programme during the last six months. Of that number, 451 remained to be verified and roughly 700 are required to attend a sitting to determine whether they are resident in the constituencies in which they were registered.
A preliminary voters' list will be published by next Monday and the official list on May 31.
In terms of the overall preparation for the election, the EAC said it was 90 per cent ready with the sticking point being the shortage of 1,500 election day workers needed for Corporate Area constituencies. To date 19,600 applications have been received with just over 1,000 being rejected following screening.
An election centre will be established on the grounds of the Jamaica Broilers complex on Hope Road to accommodate members of observer groups, security personnel, the political parties and EOJ staff. Daily press briefings will be conducted at the centre between Nomination Day and Election Day. On Election Day the briefings will be held on the hour.
