House-to-House data will be put up for public scrutiny- GECOM Commissioners

The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has decided that it will put up the data acquired from the July-August House-to-House registration exercise for public scrutiny.

Commissioner Bibi Shadick, after a meeting at the Commission’s High Street, Georgetown office on Friday, told the media that GECOM’s Chairman Justice (rtd) Claudette Singh made this decision which was supported by the Commission.

“What they’re to give us [is] some other information [on] what part of the data, if it is all 370,000 or some part of it will be put up for public scrutiny,” she said.

A total of 370,000 persons were registered during the July-August House-to-House registration exercise and of that amount, 336,000 were persons who are above 18 years old and thereby eligible to vote while the others are between 14 to 17 years old.

Shadick along with Commissioners Robeson Benn and Attorney Sase Gunraj are representing the Opposition on GECOM.

They did not support the registration exercise claiming that it was a ploy to delay the elections. Subsequently, they did not support the usage of the data noting that merging of the data will cause duplicates to be on the final voters’ list.

When asked on Friday if that view remains, Shadick said: “I don’t care where it was registered, as long as it’s on the list once. I don’t care where you registered or when you registered but your name must be there only once and nobody must be left off, that’s all.”

Meanwhile, Government nominated GECOM Commissioner Charles Corbin told the media that the cross-matching of fingerprints and other processes to have the house-to-house data ready, will be completed before the end of the Claims and Objections period.

He disclosed that the first batch of cross-matched fingerprints will be returned from overseas within the next week upon which the final batch will be sent.

“The house to house data will be up as soon as we have completed cross-matching and encoding,” he said. Corbin added that the

GECOM is currently conducting a 42-day period of Claims and Objections. The Commissioners are encouraging persons to use this period to get their address and information updated.