Claims and objections process to last for 49 days
It is not clear why the Secretariat has proposed these changes. Efforts to reach Singh, Lowenfield and Public Relations Officer Yolanda Ward last evening proved futile.
Ward had however told this newspaper earlier in the day that a statement would be issued to guide registrants on what they should do during the process.
Stabroek News had reached out for an explanation as to how those persons who registered for the first time during the recently concluded House-to-House (HtH) exercise were to approach C&O since they will not find their names on the PLE, which will be issued in the new week.
Ward confirmed that while the data from HtH will be used it will not be included in the PLE which will be used for C&O.
Asked whether those new registrants should therefore make a “Claim” to be added to the list, Ward said that the Secretariat will issue a statement before October 1 to guide these registrants on how to proceed.
At its statutory meeting on Tuesday, the commission decided that a 35-day period of C&O will begin on October 1st, 2019.
Commissioners told reporters that the qualifying date for inclusion on the Official List of Electors during this period will be December 31st. Persons who will be 18 or over on or before this date are advised to check the lists in their communities for their names. Persons may also apply to have their address changed or object to the inclusion of a person who may be dead or otherwise disqualified from the same list of electors on which they appear.
Since C&O will begin before the completion of the encoding of data collected during the HtH process, the PLE will be drawn from the same database as the 2011, 2015, 2016 and 2018 voters’ lists.
According to government-nominated Commissioner Charles Corbin, the encoding of the data for the more than 370,000 persons registered during HtH will be conducted “parallel to” C&O.
“Any investigation originating from cross matching will also be conducted parallel to [claims and objections] and a list published after so there will be two lists at some point after the HtH data is properly cross matched within itself,” Corbin explained.