GECOM decision on house to house data delayed again
The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has again delayed making a decision on the use of the House to House (HtH) until such time as certain anomalies are resolved.
Speaking with reporters yesterday outside of GECOM’s head office, oppositionnominated commissioner Sase Gunraj explained that the commission continues to grapple with the issue. He explained that the report on the fingerprint crossmatching exercise indicated that more than 60,000 of those who registered during HtH were not in the National Register of Registrants Database (NRRD)
“One would want to assume that those are new persons but the Chief Election Officer has indicated that the secretariat examined the report and found about 17,000 people who were presumed to be new on the NRRD,” Gunraj said.
He noted that because of this development the commission was unable to vote on the use of the data.
“There can be no vote on the matter as there is no clarity on the data itself much less its use,” he stressed adding that a decision has been taken to contact the service providers Gemalto for a possible explanation.
Gunraj acknowledged that a timely resolution of this matter is essential to the efficient conduct of the March 2, 2020 General and Regional Elections but could give no timeline as to when a decision is likely to be made. Meanwhile, Government-nominated Commissioner Vincent Alexander appeared unperturbed by the development. He told reporters that the commission has to work with the unique identifier.
“We have asked the contracting firm to do [so] and GECOM has to do its normal process [including] fieldwork…that is what we should be doing,” he stressed.
Asked to offer a possible reason for the significant number of unmatched entries, Alexander said “the question should be how many duplicates and I think they found [over] 1,600 duplicates.”
These duplicates he claimed are being investigated. Alexander was also unfazed by the low number of persons who have collected their Identification Cards following a call from GECOM to do so.
Stabroek News reported yesterday that 290 of the 18512 persons had collected their cards at close of business on Sunday.
This number according to Alexander is not alarming if those who have not collected the cards fall into the category of local dead, overseas dead or migrated.