Chairman of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) Elections Management Committee, Ambassador Allie Bangura has disclosed that as part of the registration sensitization and education exercise, the party has being to all the regions and districts of the country.
Ambassador Bangura noted that the party was part of pilot biometric registration exercise a few months ago to educate and sensitize the people, and that during that exercise they were able to understand the workings of the system, which he said, helped the party’s agents involved in the pilot exercise for onward education and sensitization of their members.
The SLPP Elections Management Committee Chairman further disclosed that because the NEC is faced with financial constraints it is unable to provide the earlier stated two thousand nine hundred and ninety eight (2,998) biometric machines for all registration centers in the country. He said instead the registration exercise would now be conducted with only eight hundred (800) machines for the entire country. He said the SLPP would have preferred a situation where the biometric machines were made available in all centers across the country.
He noted that this is bound to have consequences on the registration process as the entire exercise is billed to last for only sixty-four (64) days and that the machines would be in a particular center for only fifteen (15) days band not more.
“We only hope that such an arrangement would ensure the registration of all eligible voters in the country,” he noted.
In terms of monitoring, he said the party has received a letter from NEC inviting them to send party agents to monitor the registration exercise which he notes provides for the SLPP to have representatives all over the country to monitor the process.
By Betty Milton
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