The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Electoral Commission-EC is to spend Shillings 24 billion on the voter’s register display exercises across the country. The exercise that kicks off on February 19 will run until March 10th, 2020.
Sam Rwakojo, the EC Secretary who is also the Accounting Officer, says the biggest chunk of the money will go into paying the over 165,000 voter’s register display officers.
In the recent weeks, EC has been complaining that government wasn’t funding their budget as requested in order to implement the 2020/2021 election road map.
The Finance Ministry had advised the Commission to reduce on their total of Shillings 868 billion they requested for to run the next election, on grounds that government doesn’t have the money.
Justice Simon Byabakama, the EC Chaiperson, says they agreed to scale down on some of the activities that require money. He said however, that they are still engaging the Finance Ministry to agree on how much can be cut without affecting Commission work.
“They haven’t given us all the money to run all these programs. But we are in talks with Finance to increase our budget. Elections are not for the poor,” Byabakama said.
Meanwhile, according to EC 17,782,594 people have registered to take part in the forthcoming elections. According to Justice Byabakama, these people will be voting at 34,344 polling stations across the country.
Voters have been urged to go to their respective polling stations to verify their particulars where voter’s register will be displayed from 8am to 6pm on all the assigned days.
The exercise will involve checking for the correctness of their particulars to confirm that their photographs appear against correct particulars, raise objections to the inclusion or removal of a voter’s particulars from the register, report to the display officer those who have died, those who are under 18 years of age, those who reside or originate from a parish other than the one they are registered in and those who appear more than once on the register.
The exercise will also include the display of the register for special interest groups such as youths, elderly and people with disabilities
“A clean voters’ register is a cornerstone for conducting peaceful, free, fair and credible elections. The display exercise gives the electorate an opportunity to participate in the cleaning of the national voters’ register,” Byabakama said.
He called upon on all stakeholders in the electoral process to participate in this exercise.
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So how did 165,000 display officers serve 34,344 polling stations if each was expected to have only 2 officers. Clarify.
I even worked as display officer in my home district.,up now i have not recieved my training and display payments