The citizens’ arms accredited by the Commission on Elections will be fielding 3,500 volunteers for poll duty in Negros Oriental and Siquijor during Monday’s mid-term elections.
Msgr. Julius Heruela, who heads the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting and the National Movement for Free Elections local chapters, disclosed Thursday that more volunteers have signed up for monitoring and reporting duties following a series of trainings and seminars held in the past weeks.
The volunteers will be detailed at the various polling precincts to act as observers during the conduct of Monday’s elections and report on situationers, unusual events and violations of the law such as vote-buying, among others.
More importantly, however, is for the volunteers to closely monitor post-voting activities, such as the printing, counting and transmission of results with the use of the automated Precinct Count Optical Scan units.
Also, seven roving teams, each comprising two members of a communications group, two volunteers and/or media practitioners and a driver, will be deployed to pre-assigned clustered areas in Negros Oriental to pick up the copies of the election returns for the citizens’ arms and the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas.
On Thursday, Msgr. Heruela signed a memorandum of agreement with the local KBP chapter, represented by its vice president, Sherlyn Infante, the manager of Radio DYRM-AM, allowing the citizens’ arms to collect the ER copies intended for the KBP.
The agreement comes after local KBP authorities admitted that due to limitations on manpower and logistics, they could not possibly gather all the ER copies assigned them from the total 1,076 clustered voting precincts in Negros Oriental.
Some of the polling places are situated in remote and near inaccessible areas as well as in the hinterlands. In the May 2010 polls, the KBP local chapter was unable to pick up the ER copies for the same reasons.
Members of the local tri-media and the citizens’ arms have also agreed to coordinate with each other for a wider election coverage beginning Monday and thereafter.
A media center shall be set up at the Marian Priests’ Center at the St. Catherine of Alexandria Cathedral compound for easy access of the press to the election results and parallel counting to be carried out by the citizens’ arms. (PNA)
