Bayelsa guber: INEC satisfied with PVC collection – REC

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is satisfied with the rate of collection of the Permanent Voter Card (PVC) in Bayelsa state ahead of the November 16 governorship election in the state.

This was disclosed by the Bayelsa state Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Mr Monday Tom, Tuesday while speaking on the commission’s readiness to conduct the poll.

The REC said the commission has prepared adequately to conduct the exercise and noted that so far only about 33,000 PVCs remained uncollected out of the 923,000 for eligible registered voters in the state.

According to him, this represents over 90 per cent of rate of distribution of the PVCs, saying it is the best so far and keenly reflects the interest of the electorate in the exercise.

“We actually extended PVC collection to between Sept 2 and Sept 30, just to ensure that electorate have their PVCs.

“And during the exercise, the response was high because out of about 47,000 PVCs with INEC over 15,000 were collected, leaving a balance of about 33,000 unclaimed PVCs,” he said.

He also said that so far, the commission had concluded training for INEC staff and distribution of non-sensitive materials.

“As far as the commission is concerned, we are doing the best to get totally prepared for the Bayelsa gubernatorial election.

“We’ve concluded on most of the training for officers, we have trained the Senior Polling Officers (SPOs), we have done all levels of non-sensitive materials received, batched and set for onward distribution to the racks.

“Due to the difficult terrain in Bayelsa with about 70 per cent water component, we adopted to use the racks system and not the Local Government Areas, this is to ensure prompt and easy access to the polling units.

“So far, we have got all our non-sensitive materials for the election, we have harvested the SPOs and by next week we shall be training the Polling Officers (POs) and the Assistant Polling Officers (APOs),” he added.

Tom said finances required for the conduct of the election were already secured at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

According to him, planning an election is like climbing a ladder, adding that so far, the commission was almost done with the entire process.

“Today, we are handing over registers to 45 political parties that will participate in the election and this exercise represents almost the concluding part of every election plan,” he said. (NAN)

Leave a Reply