ECP to observe National Voters Day on Dec 7

Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Friday decided to observe ‘National Voters Day’ on December 7 in a befitting manner in the country.
The decision was made in the 14th planning Committee meeting of the commission, which was chaired by Secretary ECP Babar Yaqoob Fateh Muhammad and attended by chief election commissioners and other senior ECP officials of four provinces.
It was decided that all provincial chief secretaries will be invited to ECP for arrangements of de-limitations.
The committee also decided to start special drive in 79 districts for registration of women voters from December. It will be ensured to register all eligible women to register as voters with the ECP before general elections 2018.
The ECP will get help from national database and registration authority (NADRA) and civil society in this regard while NADRA’s mobile vans will be sent to all these districts particularly where women voters are less than the male voters.
It was decided that the main National Voters Day ceremony will be held in the federal capital which will attend by Chief Election Commissioner Justice Sardar Muhammad Raza and 700 senior officials of different government departments.
Similarly, at provincial level ceremonies will be be held at Governor Houses, in which provincial Election commoners and other officials will attend the events.
It was decided that rallies will be organized at district level to mark the day and create awareness in public about the importance of vote and voters. Representatives of media, civil society and women organizations will be invited in these activities.
The meeting was informed that by holding these events, people will be informed about the importance of vote and registering them as voters and that country’s people particularly women will be asked to come forward and register them as voters.
Secretary ECP directed the provincial election commissioners to make proper arrangements for successful holding of these events at provincial and district level to mark the day.
The meeting was informed that the commission was efficiently working on computerized registration of electoral rolls in all districts throughout the country while the work has been completed in Balochistan.
It was informed that the data-feeding system of computerized electoral rolls in FATA and all other districts will be completed in December. This system will help new voters to easily register them as voters at district offices of district election commissioners.
This will be a great facility for people as earlier this facility was only available in the district offices of national database and registration authority (NADRA).
The meeting decided that the training programme for 900,000 polling staff will be started in last week of November. In first phase ECP’s 85 lead trainers will be trained while in second phase 3000 master trainers will be trained and the whole polling staff will be trained in third phase. The whole training programme will be completed by May, 2018.

Source: APP